Revealing the leopard

Yesterday I watched revealing the leopard on Nature. The Leopard strike in Kung Fu is something I always wondered about. Especially since I had to do a bunch of them for the Kung Fu Bus song. The thing about the leopard strike is that the strike also looks like a python. So in Sup Ji (cross) which is also called the five animal form (NG ying cuen) I could never decide whether that strike was more representative of the snake or the leopard, and if there had been some sort of mistake in calling it both. The thing is, a python strikes exactly the way the strike happens and I've never seen leopards fight. Did they strike like that? From what I can tell from the documentary, the answer is no. But when the leopard stalks prey it looks a lot the way you look in terms of body positioning when you are doing the technique. There was also some great night vision footage of the leopard stalking where there was a close up on the leopard's paw. The paw looks the same as the hand does in leopard strike, and when walking the animal froze with that paw hanging there for a very long time, just standing there frozen feet away from the prey that did not see her. (The Leopard in the documentary was a mother.) Of course when she actually kills something, she garbs it and bites the jugular. But even though the function of a leopard strike is more of a punch or jab where using different knuckles than you usually use, you still would say looking at the silhouette of a person doing the technique that it reminds you of a leopard. That is, if you have seen a lot of leopards. You have to remember that the naming of techniques after animals is not so much about the spirit of the animal, or acting like an animal, so much as naming a technique after something to classify it and remember what you are talking about.
That being said, there is also an aspect of animal mimicry in Kung Fu as well.
And after watching the documentary I realized that the snake and the leopard actually have similar fighting personalities. Snakes lie in wait, patiently waiting for an opportune time to strike. Leopards do too. Of course sometimes they charge like a lion. But they are less confrontational than lions or tigers and tend to melt away into the shadows and are seldom seen. Apparently this enable them to live closer to humans. In fact, there are many leopards whose territories include farms, suburbs, and apparently in Nairobi they are right in the city knocking over trash cans at night. But melting away at day, kind of like raccoons I guess.
It turns out that because of this technique, though there are some types of leopards that are critically endangered, on a whole there are a ton of leopards left and they out number all the other big wild cats put together.