Distribution of Subspecies.

Since Carl Linnaeus published his description of leopards in the 10th edition of Systema Naturaein 1758, as many as 27 leopard subspecies were subsequently described by naturalists from 1794 to 1956. In 1996, according to DNA analysis carried out in the 1990s, only eight subspecies are considered valid. Later analysis revealed a ninth valid subspecies, the Arabian leopard (P. p. nimr). Because of limited sampling of African leopards, this number might be an underestimation.

The nine subspecies recognised by IUCN are:

• African leopard (P. p. pardus), (Linnaeus, 1758) — inhabits sub-Saharan Africa;
• Indian leopard (P. p. fusca), (Meyer, 1794) — inhabits the Indian Subcontinent;
• Javan leopard (P. p. melas), (Cuvier, 1809) — inhabits Java, Indonesia.
• Arabian leopard (P. p. nimr), (Hemprich and Ehrenberg, 1833) — inhabits the Arabian Peninsula;
• Amur leopard (P. p. orientalis), (Schlegel, 1857) — inhabits the Russian Far East, Korean Peninsula and Northeast China;
• North Chinese leopard (P. p. japonensis), (Gray, 1862) — inhabits northern China;
• Caucasian leopard (P. p. ciscaucasica), (Satunin, 1914), later described as Persian leopard (P. p. saxicolor), (Pocock, 1927) — inhabits central Asia: the Caucasus, Turkmenistan and northern Iran;
• Indo-Chinese leopard (P. p. delacouri), (Pocock, 1930) — inhabits mainland Southeast Asia;
• Sri Lankan leopard (P. p. kotiya), (Deraniyagala, 1956) — inhabits Sri Lanka.

A morphological analysis of characters of leopard skulls implies the validity of two more subspecies:

• Anatolian leopard (P. p. tulliana), (Valenciennes, 1856) — inhabits Western Turkey;
• Baluchistan leopard (P. p. sindica), (Pocock, 1930) — inhabits Pakistan, and possibly also parts of Afghanistan and Iran.