India, Dec. 14 -- Snarling leopards with kills slung on trees figure frequently in documentaries and photographs. The "butcher's hook" hanging in a "window of leaves" is popularly perceived as the leopard's default behaviour. A leopard did exactly that with a sambar kill not too far away as the crow flies from the heart of Chandigarh, hanging it 20 feet from the ground in the Sukhna Wildlife Sanctuary (SWS). But it was not a commonplace table in the treetops where the leopard would eat at his/her pleasure. In the context of the Shivalik foothills, it constituted a unique moment of its natural history.

There are no domineering predators here such as tigers and lions to hound leopards into escaping into trees with kills. Nor is the formida...