How City-Dwelling Leopards Improve Human Health
A new study found leopards may prevent nearly 100 rabies cases in Mumbai every year.
Mumbai is one of the densest urban centers on the planet, but a peculiar ecosystem has emerged around the city's immense Sanjay Gandhi National Park.
Leopards—about 40 of them—have been correlated with lower incidences of rabies, a disease that kills about 20,000 people in India every year.
The reason for the correlation? Feral dogs carrying the disease are being eaten by the large cats.
A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment looked at how leopards in the park inadvertently impact animals and people in the region.
One of the study's authors, Alex Braczkowski, was in the park filming for a National Geographic channel show in 2015 where he was struck by the stark border of the
