Credit: Nikolay Zinoviev Study Take-Aways: Different African populations were genetically interrelated suggesting abundant gene flow across Africa such that all African population should be considered together as single subspecies. There appeared a striking genomic distance between leopards living in Asia vs. leopards in Africa. Asian leopards are more genetically separated from African leopards than brown bear species are from polar bear species, the researchers found. The two leopard groups actually diverged around the same time as Neanderthals split apart from modern humans. The genetic differences between African and Asian leopards have been maintained since 500,000 to 600,000 years ago. Asian leopards retain markedly less overall genetic variation than is seen in African leopards.