At first WE thought he was Matimba. Then we compared him to the picture from Andre that we thought was Matimba, but realised that he was not the same. Then some very late night spot recognition work, akin to what the FBI might do, turned up a further confusing fact … the shot of Matimba by Andre is actually Mbali, Matimba’s sister. So that solved that issue, but it got us no closer to solving the mystery of who this leopard was.
It was only when one of the team tracked down a photograph of a leopard that matched him perfectly that the trail warmed up. (WE are trying to get permission to show you this image.) It had been taken at Leopard Hills in the western Sabi Sands, but there was no name attached for the leopard.
The next break came when images of the same leopard were found in the guest galleries on the Elephant plains site under the name Mfuni. Then more images were found at Outdoor Photo under the name Nfuni. According to some posting on another forum Nfuni is actually Mvula. So while we are confident that we know who he is not and also that he has been seen recently at Elephant plains and before that at Leopard Hills, and we have three names for him, we still want to find out what he was first called and where he came from.
WE would like to thank the WEwiki team, all of the viewers that sent in clues to the mail address as well as all of you that have been participating in the discussion in the WE Social Network … it really is in your nature.
Well WE will try and get the permission to post some of the images that have been taken of this new male leopard, finalize his name and see if we can’t dig up a little about his history and parentage. This story isn’t over yet.
