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In many senses the Annang past is a ‘scarce resource’. Annang history is hedged in by the practice of past and present religious injunctions, by concepts of knowledge and by the interplay of ‘hierarchies of credibility’. The past's scarcity is derived very simply from the fact that very few people living in the villages of the ‘leopard area’ today talk freely and directly about ékpê ówó. There is good reason for many older people to be uncomfortable with the past of the leopard murders. They swore oaths that they would have nothing to do with leopard men, oaths ingested and consumed into their bodies for a lifetime in unknown substances of fearful power. Memories of the leopard men are also ‘scarce’ because there is an imperative to retain authority and consistency between narratives. These stories are not infinitely susceptible to contemporary invention. This chapter addresses the most common and widely accepted formula of the past that has circulated since the investigations.

The first part of this chapter discusses authors and their works which involve black and white races and rape. Late-nineteenth-century American writers did not create the stereotype of the rapist, but their work became a forum for the playing out of what was virtually a national obsession with the black male body. The later part of the chapter focuses on the works of Thomas Dixon Jr., whose work ultimately talked about white supremacy and made figurations of black men as lustful Negro beasts. The discussion focuses on how, in The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden—1865–1900 (1902) and The Clansman (1905), when his heroes find their masculinity threatened by the very space of white domesticity they have vowed to protect, Dixon enlists proscribed uses of violence to resolve white male confusion and conflict over the changing definitions of gender roles. It also talks about how the ideal of white masculinity in Dixon's narratives is in danger of capitulating to a white erotic obsession with monstrous blackness as seen in his novel, The Sins of the Father. In this novel, Dixon felt compelled to confront the problem of white male/black female miscegenation centrally. Dixon's popular race novels achieved their success because they explore a fantasy of white male rescue enacted through the subordination of black men and white women.

This introductory chapter begins with a background of the ‘man-leopard’ murders, which occurred at Calabar Province in south-eastern Nigeria in 1945. At the time the police investigation was reported as the ‘biggest, strangest murder hunt in the world’, and it would become the last major investigation in Africa into killings linked to a shape-shifting cult. Three years later, when the police wound up their enquiries in early 1948, they calculated that 196 men, women and children had been victims of the man-leopard murders, though they also conceded that there were almost certainly more murders that were never brought to light. The discussion then turns to leopard men in fact and fiction. The chapter then sets out the purposes of the book, which are to revisit the criminal and forensic dimensions of the murder enquiries suggested by events in Calabar Province and elsewhere across the continent and place the murders in their historical context. The aim is to ask how life in colonial Nigeria, in its cultural, social, political and economic aspects, contributed to the murders, and in turn what the murders and their investigations say about life in colonial Nigeria.

Post‐Bernal debates about the extent to which classical Greek culture was informed by Afroasiatic elements are interestingly mirrored in revisionist accounts of the genealogies of Caribbean cultures. While Derek Walcott and Wilson Harris are the best‐known Anglophone Caribbean writers to have engaged with Homer and classical civilization, Denis Williams’ Other Leopards (1963), the finest novel about the Caribbean encounter with Africa to have appeared to date, is arguably the text that most fully excavates the intersection of African and European elements in the Caribbean psyche. Set in a “Sudanic” country, the novel suggests an alternative provenance for the North African strands in the “roots of classical civilization”. It problematizes originary conceptions of cultures, moving towards a view of Caribbean and North African identity that has much in common with Black Athena, through its unearthing of submerged sub‐Saharan African cultural traces in both the landscape and its ambivalent Guyanese protagonist's psyche.

This chapter relates how impermanence arose when Orgyan Chokyi herded horses. One day, as described in this chapter, she went to sell horses at the meadow of Dechen Thang near the Cholung Bum Monastery. She spent a few nights in the temple, during which time a foal was born to a golden mare. Fifteen days went by, when one night a leopard came from nowhere and killed the foal. The mother let out a great cry of anguish. Chokyi came to the door as she neighed loudly, causing a commotion in the meadow. She continued to neigh, so on the following morning Chokyi went out to search for the corpse of the foal. Chokyi found it above a spring, carried it back, and set it down on the meadow above the monastery. For Chokyi, great impermanence arose from this event, the likes of which she had never known, and she wept a great deal.

In the summer of 1995, students found a large number of malformed northern leopard frogs (Rana pipiens) on a field trip to Minnesota. This discovery was quickly followed by other similar reports. This book explores the science underlying the malformed frog phenomenon: the history, the background that science provides to our current thinking, and what science offers in terms of solutions to the problem. It also identifies the causes and mechanisms underlying malformations, and offers possible solutions to this phenomenon.

By February 1946 the murders had resulted in a breakdown in law and order on such a scale that the administrative map was redrawn and eight Court Areas from Abak and Opobo Divisions were amalgamated to create the ‘Leopard Area’. This zone was frequently referred to as the ‘infected area’ and the killings as a whole were discussed in an idiom of contagion and disease. The crisis was called an ‘outbreak’, and villages in which no suspicious deaths were recorded were said to be ‘immune’. The atmosphere and daily routines of people living in the villages around Ibesit and Ikot Afanga were dominated by confusion and fear. People were so frightened of the human-leopard killers that they would urinate in their houses at night for fear of stepping outside in the dark. Parents would lock their children in the house if they were leaving them at home to go to market. These fears, however, were not confined to the anxiety of physical attacks. The fear of being accused of involvement in ékpê ówó was also strong and people would not go out for fear of being named as an associate or of being in a particular place at a particular time. The leopard murders constituted what people today call íní ádót úyó (lit. time of slander or false accusation).

The final months of the man-leopard murder investigations in late 1947 represented a key moment in the political trajectory of south-eastern Nigeria. They marked a shift in relations between the ‘educated elements’ of the improvement unions like the Ibibio Union and the colonial state. Coinciding with the Local Government Despatch of 1947, a secret review was under way in the Eastern Provinces of the political fallout of the Second World War. Its focus was to explain why the Native Administration reforms of the 1930s had failed and how the emerging political threat of the improvement unions, which were buoyed by their recent affiliation to the National Council, could be channelled into local administration. This review of the improvement unions in 1947 is a vantage point from which to focus on the historical trajectory of power formations in south-eastern Nigeria to this point. Despite colonial attempts to divert the elite's energies away from nationalist agitation, the Annang and Ibibio ‘reading public’ became fully engaged in the party politics of the 1950s, thus realigning regional alliances, remaking collective histories, and reinforcing the link between development and the politics of identity.

The Lucké renal adenocarcinoma of northern leopard frogs (Rana pipiens) was originally described by Balduin Lucké during the 1930s. The depletion of frog populations has been a major concern of herpetologists worldwide. One study has investigated the cell biology of the Lucké renal adenocarcinoma since 1958. Early in these studies, it became obvious that the best way to obtain frog renal adenocarcinomas for experimental studies was to study frogs in natural populations. In retrospect, it seems curious that an investigation into the cell biology of a frog neoplasm would lead to early recognition of frog population declines. The history of the Lucké renal adenocarcinoma of northern leopard frogs is impressive in that these studies led to the notions that herpesviruses can cause cancer, that there was a problem with frog populations in the upper Midwest, and that differentiation therapy may lead to a new form of cancer treatment. This chapter reviews past and present investigations of the Lucké renal adenocarcinoma that afflicts northern leopard frogs. It examines the pathology, epidemiology, and etiology of the Lucké renal adenocarcinoma.

Sporadic reports of malformed amphibians are abundant in the literature, and these reports have been thoroughly reviewed prior to the recent “outbreak” of malformations as well as in papers related to the current malformation phenomenon. In 1993, residents near Granite Falls, Minnesota, reported “large numbers” of abnormal leopard frogs exhibiting extra limbs, missing limbs, and a missing eye. This chapter reviews findings of four years of surveys at one central Minnesota site to determine interspecific differences in malformation frequencies and types. Among seven anuran species breeding in the same pond, malformations were more frequent and varied among species with more aquatic lifestyles and became less frequent and varied as species' lifestyles were less aquatic. Mink frogs were the most severely affected using a combination of measures including the highest malformation frequency, the widest array of malformation types, a high percentage having multiple malformations, and the presence of particularly unique and gross malformations. Three of the species at this pond have noticeably declined and one species has disappeared.

Northern leopard frogs (Rana pipiens) are vulnerable to a herpesvirus-induced cancer of the mesonephros and burnsi differ little in susceptibility to the cancer compared with wild-type frogs. Ranid herpesvirus 1 is the etiological agent of the mesonephric cancer, and the virus is readily detectable in renal malignancies of burnsi frogs. This chapter reports the presence and distribution of the two pigment pattern variants of northern leopard frogs, burnsi and kandiyohi. It describes the capture and examination of 18,887 frogs. The rare burnsi and kandiyohi mutations have become polymorphic in Minnesota and its contiguous states. It is fair to ask if the frequency and distribution of pigment pattern morphs resulting from past mutation have any relevance to contemporary problems in amphibian population declines. Whether burnsi polymorphism is transient or balanced cannot be answered with the relatively few years' data available on frequencies.

In August 1995, a group of middle school students on a field trip in south-central Minnesota discovered malformed northern leopard frogs (Rana pipiens). Within a year, more than 200 outbreaks of malformed frogs had been recorded, from one end of the state to the other. Some three years earlier, similar deformities had also been found at multiple sites in Canada. Parasites may explain some, even many, of the deformities outbreaks. Something in the normal ecology of frog populations must. But there is clear and compelling evidence that this is not the whole story. The whole story remains a work in progress. Both scientists and journalists have made a bit of a mess of this story. Inference, which should be the tool that tightens the bolts on well-built experiments, has instead become a kind of blunt instrument with which researchers with competing views beat one another about the head and shoulders. It is no surprise that deformed frogs have been treated in the press as either a very big deal or no big deal at all.

This chapter examines the carnivore fossils present in the Daka Member. Carnivores from the Daka Member include leopards, lions, and crocutoid hyaenas. There are 10 specimens of carnivore fossils in the Daka Member, and the assemblage presents one of the best Pleistocene Crocuta crania known. This cranium, along with remains of both Panthera cf. leo and Panthera cf. pardus, indicate the presence of numerous large carnivores in the community represented by the Daka Member.

In Mumbai, the Sanjay Gandhi National Park is besieged by a sprawling urban agglomeration of 20 million inhabitants. The first part of this paper documents the dangerous and sometimes deadly presence of leopards in and around the park. In the second section, it is argued that leopards in Mumbai are not only a matter of human-nonhuman conflict: the panther attacks reveal conflicts of other kinds, between human stakeholders, and in particular highlight graduated levels of citizenship. Lastly, the leopards also reveal (or generate) spatial tensions – though they are also efficient go-betweens to help solve these conflicts.

This chapter describes several malformed frog hotspots, and also describes a staterun aquacultural site from northwestern Iowa that produces malformed frogs. It presents four sets of radiographs of animals from malformation sites in other parts of the country, including: (1) northern leopard frogs from Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, site; and sets of bullfrog radiographs from (2) the Ripley Pond site in Ohio, (3) a Santa Clara County, California site and (4) a Switzerland County, Indiana site. Finally, the chapter briefly describes the U.S.F.W.S. National Wildlife Refuge sampling program.

This chapter discusses hunting and trapping of tigers in the Malay world. The hunting and trapping of tigers—and occasionally leopards—involved a range of motives. Tigers were killed in order to rid the environment of these dangerous animals. Around 1600, the princes of Banten, Jakarta, Cirebon, Gabang, Mataram, and Tuban were described as hunters. The only ruler who was explicitly named as a tiger hunter was the Sultan of Banten. Tiger hunts were organized by local, indigenous chiefs, such as regents, but usually by the lower-ranking district heads, heads of subdistricts, or village heads. The chapter discusses how among the sedentary peasantry, trapping tigers and leopards was more important than hunting them. The specific tiger-trap was one of the main instruments in this respect, separating the “peasants” from the “tribes”. The use of poison may have been largely restricted to Java.

This chapter discusses the rebirth of the plantation romance from the 1900s through to the 1940s, discussing two key popular fictions: Thomas Dixon’s The Leopard’s Spots and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind. It contextualizes the plantation romance as a genre that speculates on the past and on historiography itself. Such popular fictions re-tell the story of Reconstruction, not just to do a historical critique of it as misguided or as a failure, but to produce perceptual strategies that renew racisms along different lines. It shows how Gone With The Wind transforms racial perception from one based on status and character to one based on creating racial contexts.

This chapter examines the rise, decline, and fall of the tiger in Malay world. It reveals that the tiger has disappeared from Bali, has disappeared or is about to disappear from Java, and is becoming rare in Sumatra and the Malayan Peninsula. Half a century ago, tigers were plentiful in some of these regions, but less so in others. The chapter examines the reason tigers vanished where they did, the timing of their disappearance, and the development of tiger numbers during the period under consideration. It applies the tiger densities found for the Malayan Peninsula to the other areas, compensating for differences in vegetative cover, and population density and concentration. The chapter also looks at figures regarding people killed by tigers and tigers killed by humans in order to establish a trend for Java, Sumatra, Bali, and the Malayan peninsula.

This chapter reviews Thomas Dixon's defense of lynching that makes the wresting of literary efficacy from its historic possessors a self-conscious theme in his work. Dixon co-opts the two staples of abolitionist rhetoric, the Protestant Bible and Jefferson's Declaration, for the cause of white “redemption.” In The Leopard's Spots (1902), the first volume of his Reconstruction trilogy, the Invisible Empire of the KKK is a prefiguration of the millennial reign on earth. By staging the vocal as a decisive arena of Reconstruction conflict, Dixon's romances follow the lead of A Fool's Errand. Preacher turned novelist turned playwright turned screenwriter, Dixon seeks to overthrow the egalitarian narrative by seizing and transferring its agency in history to the longtime victims of its falsehoods, the white men and women of Dixie. In his account, the most fanatical elements in the North have held the rhetorical upper hand for half a century, from the abolitionists to the Republican architects of racial equality.