The whole process of the disappearance of the three children in Tibet to the recovery is very mysterious, according to the reason, they are only three-year-old children, they have no ability to run alone to the high mountains so far, according to the vague description of the children who were retrieved, they should have been taken away by some kind of large animal.
Three leopards had been witnessed near the farm before the child went missing, so speculation was high that the possibility of being taken away by the leopard was high. But if the leopard took away the child, why did it "bite and not kill"?
Leopards are nature's top predators, large carnivores, and it's hard to imagine giving up meat to their mouths.
Leopards are common in India, and even in large Indian cities like Mumbai, at night, leopards sneak into the streets to hunt stray dogs. In India, leopard injuries are also frequent, far from it, on March 11, 2021, a wild leopard in Madhya Pradesh escaped from the reserve, and in the process of its escape, it injured 5 people in succession.
The number of leopards in contemporary China is relatively rare, so the probability of encountering people is not large, and injuries naturally rarely occur. But in the western Sichuan region, leopards enter the village to hunt poultry and livestock, but occasionally.
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Compared with tigers, leopards are indeed less aggressive to humans, and in daily life, they will actively avoid humans, but most of the time, this law is aimed at adults.
Predators have their own set of ways to judge the strength of their opponents, and one of the most important reference criteria is body size. For example, why are children and women more vulnerable to stray dogs? Mainly because the way the dog judges the strength or weakness of the opponent, mainly the horizontal line of sight, the higher than its own line of sight, the more difficult it is to provoke.
Some wildlife experts also recommend that when encountering animals such as lions, tigers and leopards in the wild, try to slowly retreat with open arms, in order to make themselves look bigger in their eyes.
For leopards, three-year-olds are never strong, and they dare to take them away, which explains everything, but why didn't leopards eat them? Many netizens analyzed that perhaps because of the "baby face effect", leopards feel that children are cute and can't bear to hurt them.
The "baby face effect" refers to the phenomenon of the "baby schema" proposed by the Austrian animal behaviorist Conrad Lorenz in 1943, which roughly means that the baby has some typical features, such as a convex forehead, a small mouth and nose, large eyes, etc. These features combine to form a very cute image, so that people will feel happy to see, feel that they are extremely cute, and then have the urge to protect and nurture.
It's a cute "conspiracy" and an innate protective mechanism for babies that induces positive emotions in people, thereby reducing the harm done to them. For example, when lions are small, they have spots, which helps them to better hide themselves, and when they grow up, their strength is enhanced, they are not needed, and the spots will gradually fade. In this regard, it has something in common with the cuteness of babies.
The "baby schema" is not the patent of human babies, and if the characteristics of the baby schema also appear on the kittens and puppies, it will also induce positive emotions in people.
It is based on the concept of "baby schema", some people speculate that perhaps this phenomenon is also applicable in the animal world, for example, we see kittens and puppies are much cuter than big cats and dogs, and the desire to protect is stronger.
So for leopards, does the cuteness of human children also make them have the urge to protect and nurture? In addition, in real life, there are also some big cat cubs who will raise the cubs of other animals as their own children after they die.
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Does the "baby schema" apply to leopards? It is currently impossible to verify, but from the behavioral characteristics of the animal itself, this possibility is almost non-existent.
In the animal world, interspecies competition is a common phenomenon, and one of the most common behaviors is to kill each other's cubs. In the African savannah, lion cubs are often hunted by hyenas. In the forest, tigers will crowd out leopards, and for leopards, tigers who can't beat adult tigers will attack small tigers. Obviously hyenas don't think the little lion is cute, and the leopard doesn't think the little tiger is cute.
After the 50s of the last century, due to the serious tiger infestation, the country set off a wave of large-scale hunting of beasts, leopards are also the main target of people to kill, for leopards, humans are also their natural enemies, then what confidence do we have, think it will think that the cubs of natural enemies are cute?
In addition, the leopard's conventional prey does not contain humans, but in the world, there are also man-eating leopards, indicating that they will prey on humans, and it is too far-fetched to use the "baby schema" to explain the phenomenon of leopards "biting but not killing" three children in Tibet.
The whole incident remains to be investigated as to how the three children were brought to the mountains.