THANE: The adult leopard rescued from the basement of a Thane hotel on Wednesday is not among the 40 cats caught on camera traps set up in the forest last year, forest officials said.The task to match the rescued leopard's rosette pattern with data of the 40 leopards proved futile. The rosette pattern is a distinctive identification feature for a a leopard like what fingerprints are to humans."Two teams sifted through the database of the 40 leopards, but this leopard's patterns did not match with any of the 40," said deputy conservator of forest Dr Jitendra Ramgaokar. "We are certain that the leopard is from SGNP, but we are still to find out its particular territory."Speaking of the process to identify leopards in this region, Nikit Surve a member of Wildlife Conservation Society of India, who has been working with SGNP, said, "Officials of Sanjay Gandhi National Park set up camera traps in summer to ascertain the leopard population within the range. A census drive in 2017, 40 leopards with varying rosette patterns were tracked."Surve said that since Wednesday, they separated data of male and female leopards on the basis of the absence or presence of the scrotal sac. "Then, we took data of male leopards and compared their rosette patterns with the ones of the leopard rescued on Wednesday. As we didn't find any match, we added this new information to the database," Surve added.Researchers and activists said that the leopard could also have managed to hide from cameras as it grew up."...Over the past few years, this leopard may have been a shy cub or behind his mother around the camera traps and so it missed being caught on camera. It could also be one that travels distances and returns before daylight," Surve said.

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