What makes these beautiful creatures such consummate experts in the business of killing?

The big cats aren’t a single biological grouping. It’s an informal term that includes the lion, tiger, jaguar and leopard (sometimes called the Great Cats), as well as the cheetah, cougar, snow leopard and clouded leopard. (The three kinds of leopard actually belong to three different genera and aren’t very closely related, despite looking quite similar.) Big cats are all apex predators that hunt large mammals using their excellent camouflage to keep hidden and powerful muscles to catch and dispatch their prey.

An antelope runs on the very tips of its feet, which allows it to have a much longer stride and means it is very fast. Cats can’t do this because they have claws instead of hooves, and they need to retract them to keep them sharp. To catch hoofed animals, the big cats must run with their entire spine flexing to help elongate their effective stride. It’s a very energetic technique though and cats can’t run fast for long distances. This in turn pushes them to be stealthy in the approach and brutal in the attack. Where a wolf will bite and retreat as it waits for its prey to bleed to death, a cougar will leap onto the back of its prey and crunch straight through the spine with a single bite.

The roar of a big cat is a sound made by the walls of the specially elongated larynx vibrating as the cat exhales, but not all big cats can do it. The cougar, cheetah and snow leopard have no roar, but they do make a variety of other noises, including chirps, screams and growls. All of the big cats are able to climb trees. Leopards are the strongest climbers; indeed, an adult male can haul a young giraffe almost six metres (20 feet) into a tree. This skill enables big cats to protect their kills from hyenas and other pack scavengers that might steal them.