Most widely distributed big cat

Even today, after having become extinct in considerable swathes of its former zoogeographical range during the past century, the leopard Panthera pardus remains the world's most widely distributed true big cat. Inhabiting a wide range of habitats, it still exists throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, northwestern Africa, parts of the Middle East and West Asia, most of tropical Asia, and in isolated zones within eastern Russia, northern China, the Korean peninsula, Sri Lanka and Java.