Wild leopards protect people from rabies

When leopards stray into a city, people often fear them. But it turns out these big cats could be valuable neighbors: by preying on feral dogs in Mumbai, they are reducing the risk of people catching rabies. Christopher O'Bryan and Alexander Braczkowski from the University of Queensland, Australia, and their colleagues compiled existing data on the diet of leopards living in Sanjay Gandhi National Park, on the edges of Mumbai. They found that feral dogs make up 40 per cent of the average leopard's diet. All told, the 35 leopards in the park probably eat 1500 dogs per year. Given how often the dogs bite people and how many of them have rabies, the team estimates that the leopards' kills are preventing about 1000 bite incidents per year--and 90 potential rabies cases