The ‘rarest cat in the world’ is surprisingly social

On moonless nights, Giza slips through the shadows like a phantom. The underworld is tarnished only by dik-diks, their eyes haloed in milky fur, their cries of alarm sifting dolefully through the void. These diminutive antelopes are doomed, for the leopard wears a pelt so dark it is indistinguishable from night. Even her eyes – coals burning in a mask of ebony – have been quenched by darkness. Danger is afoot, the dik-diks intuit, but there is no movement, no sound by which to verify the predator’s presence. On such moonless nights as these, Giza is nothing more than a myth, a legend, a rumour.

Tales of black leopards have long circulated around Laikipia, a region bristling with Kenya’s second-largest concentration of wildlife. Cattle ranches merge contiguously with conservancies here; fences have been removed so that animals – including fabled leopards – can range free.

“If you speak to local ranchers and farmers, they’ve seen them,” says Antonia Leckie, co-manager of Laikipia Wilderness Camp. “You know, years back, their fathers and their grandfathers have seen them.”

Black leopards stand out during the day, making it harder for them to reach adulthood.Credit: iStock

These men weren’t hallucinating, it seems. The shadowy figures weren’t mutant cats or black jaguars cast adrift on the wrong continent; they were in fact melanistic leopards, their pelts pigmented by a recessive gene. When photographer Will Burrard-Lucas captured an elusive male on his camera trap in 2019 on the farm adjacent to Laikipia Wilderness Camp, the ranchers’ stories were finally believed. Not long after that, camp co-founder Steve Carey was biking along a track with his son when they “almost rode over” a melanistic cub.

“This small black thing appeared from the bush,” Leckie says, “and that was the first sighting [of Giza].”

The cub, whose name means “darkness” in Swahili, had been born to a typically golden-coated leopard. Her rare pigmentation is both blessing and curse.

“She stands out like a sore thumb,” says Leckie, a trained conservation biologist.

“I believe there are probably hundreds more black leopard that are born than we ever see, because they’re so vulnerable, other male leopards often kill cubs. Hiding her would be quite a challenge for the mother. During the day, if she’s trying to hunt, she’s got a huge disadvantage – prey can see her from miles away. And although she may have an advantage, let’s say, half the month when the moon’s not out, the other half she doesn’t.”

The moon, now waxing, has been swallowed by daylight when I land at Loisaba Airstrip, an hour’s flight north of Nairobi. The sky is omnipresent, a vaulted ceiling fastened at its terminus to the scrub-stubbled horizon. Clouds are gathering; the long drought has finally broken.

“Five years ago you could do two days’ driving and not see a single guineafowl,” says guide Barend Lamprecht as we crest a ridge overlooking the Mutara River. “The riverbed was cork-dry before. We’ve had 80 millimetres of rain in a week – everything will survive now.”

Fire-side … Laikipia Wilderness Camp.

From the ridgetop, that sky-compressed landscape sprawls in a khaki blur towards the fertile Rift Valley in one direction, the arid Samburu lands in another. Shots of colour disrupt the monotony: pale pink lilies blooming far below on the rivershore; lapis-breasted vulturine guineafowls streaking through acacia grass; crimson fruits crowning thorny euphorbias.

“If you come the right time of the morning, [the euphorbias] pop like popcorn,” Lamprecht says. “Just – twah! And that’s how it spreads its seeds, and then the guineas come and the ground squirrels come and they will spread it further.”

Colour yields to earthy hues as we descend the ridge towards the camp. Here is the reticulated giraffe, patterned with oblongs of chocolate brown; there is the endangered Grevy’s zebra, striped as if by quill and ink. Tomorrow morning, with Giza still looming in my psyche, we will see the gold-and-black brushstrokes of wild dogs’ coats, the frosty skin of a hedgehog whose innards have been suctioned by an eagle owl, the flaxen ears of jackal cubs protruding from their den. High above a ridge, we’ll spy a black eagle on a reconnaissance flight.

“It’s going for hyraxes,” Lamprecht will say. “You don’t often see black eagles up here.”

But it’s the black leopard I’ve come to see. Since her birth around three-and-a-half years ago, Giza’s reputation has hinged on more than just her colouration: unlike typically elusive leopards, she’s “almost pulled to a vehicle”, Leckie says.

Wild dogs, or spotted hyena.

“The first time we actively saw her was incredible because we’d never experienced leopard behaviour like this. Steve described it as leopard falconry. We would switch the car on and she would come towards us. The fact that she’s melanistic on top of that is just a whole other level.”

But Giza’s companionable nature has, for some, devalued the pricelessness of a leopard sighting.

“Clients see her and they’re like, ‘We saw a black leopard,’ and I’m like, ‘Hang on a second, this is probably the rarest cat in the world!’” Leckie laughs. “And so we’ve maybe lost that sort of charm to it… Now it’s not about seeing her, it’s about getting the perfect shot, and [then getting] the perfect shot in the daytime.”

But steps have been taken to moderate the frenzy, with a two-vehicle limit per sighting (guests should book ahead).

A luxury mobile camp.

“We want to keep it as ethical as we can,” Leckie says. “We don’t want to have hundreds of vehicles – we’re a small, family-run bush camp, and we want to keep it like that.”

And so the thrill of a leopard sighting prevails. As the afternoon ebbs away, spotters take up sentry on a ledge and scan the forest on the river’s opposite bank. I’m on Lamprecht’s ground patrol, idling along a riverside track, peering across the burbling flow to Giza’s daytime hiding place. At dusk, she returns to this side of the river, with its familiar contours and bountiful prey. Where she will emerge, nobody knows; we only hope her pelt will betray her presence.

“She’s on the move,” crackles a voice over the radio.

Lamprecht steers towards a rise. Spotter-guide Stephen Kuyayo and recent graduate Elliot Leakey – who is hoping to work in wildlife conservation – probe the thickets with hawk-like eyes. I mimic their effort, but perceive only a barricade of green.

Blink and you’ll miss it – the famed black leopard.Credit: Will Burrard-Lucas

“The first one who sees her gets a prize,” Lamprecht says.

“A double gin and tonic?” I ask.

“If we get her in sunlight,” Lamprecht says, “a triple gin and tonic.”

The light is fading fast. Intel sputters over the radio: Giza seems to be headed our way. But she may well veer away from us towards a northern bend of the river. Calculating risk and possibility, Lamprecht continues south. Midges drift in the moribund sunbeams; beside the river, a Goliath heron’s neon-yellow eyes dance in its watery reflection; a hippo’s disgruntled echo hangs on the air.

And then Leakey spots her.

“At three o’clock, I think that’s her, just behind the big boscia tree,” he says.

Slowly, as though I’m twisting the focus knob on a pair of binoculars, Giza manifests, an inky fingerprint smudged on parchment. Lamprecht pulls into a riverside lee. Rainfall captured in the folds of the Aberdare Ranges hasn’t yet reached the river; an exposed bridge of rocks is the perfect place for Giza to cross.

“If we get her in daylight …” Lamprecht says. “I’ve [only] seen her four times during the day. It’s been dry for the last two years, it’s been a lot easier spotting her. In three months’ time it’s going to be a bush here.”

Giraffe family.

But Giza is approaching now, her form solidifying and dissolving again as she threads between the boscias, disappears into a hedge of scrub and emerges upriver. Will she turn north, melting into the foliage like a spectre, or will she meet us at the crossing? Summoned as if by leopard falconry, Giza comes to us. She moves like a phantom through the fading embers of daylight, rosettes watermarking her obsidian pelt, gemstone eyes embedded in a face of onyx. Pausing to look at us, she crosses the river, springs onto the bank, and glides towards the hill where those doleful dik-diks wait.

The writer was a guest of Bench Africa.

THE DETAILS

FLY
Emirates flies direct from Sydney and Melbourne to Dubai, with regular connections to Nairobi.
See emirates.com

STAY
Bench Africa’s three-day Laikipia safari costs from $3680 a person sharing and includes return flights from Nairobi, two nights’ accommodation at Laikipia Wilderness Camp, all meals, local drinks and 4x4 vehicle game drives. Request a leopard drive at the time of booking.
See benchafrica.com/experiences/laikipia-wilderness-camp