Is my little leopard a Pardalis Pardalis or a Pardalis Babcocki?

Vixtory75

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Can anyone tell me please if my Rocky is Pardalis Pardalis or a Pardalis Babcocki? He seems to be growing rather fast and has gained 121g in just 4 months..I was told he shouldn’t be gaining as much weight as he is in such a short time and shouldn’t be growing as fast if he’s a Babcocki. What’s your thoughts please? He has grown more from these photos but haven’t taken any recent pics, will take more today
 

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Tom

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Can anyone tell me please if my Rocky is Pardalis Pardalis or a Pardalis Babcocki? He seems to be growing rather fast and has gained 121g in just 4 months..I was told he shouldn’t be gaining as much weight as he is in such a short time and shouldn’t be growing as fast if he’s a Babcocki. What’s your thoughts please? He has grown more from these photos but haven’t taken any recent pics, will take more today
Its neither since neither type is recognized any longer.

He is not of the type of South African leopard that we have over here.

The people telling you that he's growing to fast, and/or the older growth rates you are comparing to are really not relevant because no one prior to the last few years has been raising them correctly. One gram a day is not all that much. Some grow 3-4 grams a day.

Here is the answer from a similar thread yesterday:
There are 11 clades of leopards from throughout their enormous range. 6 of those clades are from southern Africa. Here in the US we imported all sorts of different types from the 1960s until importation was banned in 1998. In 1990, one man got a bunch of freshly imported true South African tortoises of the type that we used to refer to as Gpp, and later Spp, and he kept them separate and bred them true. This type is from one of those six southern African clades. These are the ones we now refer to as "South African leopards". The other type available over here being referred to as "regular leopards", which at this point are almost all a genetic mixtures of leopards from all over the range, including Southern Africa.

I don't know what is available in Europe. As far as I know they have different types and can still import leopards from various locales. The type in your picture is NOT the type we over here in the US with our limited stock refer to as Gpp, or "the South African type", but they very well could be one of the varieties that occur naturally in Southern Africa.

While I cannot say whether or not the tortoises in your picture are one of the six South African varieties or not, I CAN say they are not the type we refer to over here as South Africans. To my eye with my limited American experience, those look like the typical "mixes", formerly erroneously referred to as "hybrids", over here.

Here are some pics of the TRUE SA leopard babies from here. There does not have to be two dots in every scute. There is a lot of variation, but after seeing a few dozen of them over a few years, you can easily distinguish between the two when they are little hatchlings.

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Vixtory75

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Joined
Mar 17, 2021
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Selby North Yorkshire UK
Thank you.. I guess there’s no telling just how large he will get then? I will be working on a very large outdoor enclosure (our garden is like a field) attached to a 15ft by 10ft summer house for him anyway in a few week
 
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