PUNE: Two back to back leopard attacks on children in villages that are only 15 km apart have perplexed experts who find the pattern strange.

"It is unusual for a leopard to be carrying out predatory attacks on children in this way. It is strange that livestock or adults have not been attacked. The two villages are only 15 km away from one another so we are trying to find out if it is the same animal," said V A Dhokte, deputy conservator of forests of Junnar.

Dhokte said that pugmarks have been found at both sites. The experts will now be called in to check if they belong to the same animal. Traps have also been set at both places to capture the animal, in case, it returns.

Vidya Athreya, a biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) India, who has been studying the subject of man-leopard conflict in the region for over a decade, said that it was possible that the same animal is involved in both attacks.

"The question of why a leopard would start attacking children in this way is harder to answer. This is certainly abnormal behaviour for leopards, which are usually shy and secretive animals," Athreya said, adding that if the animal is indeed captured, it should not be released in the wild, which is also specified in the guidelines of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change.

A decade ago, there had been a major rise in predatory attacks by leopards in Junnar and in the vicinity of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai. Athreya believes that the attacks were a result of a large-scale capture and re-release programme carried out by the forest department back then. The increased aggression of leopards could be a fall out of increased territorial conflicts amongst them after they were released in newer areas.

"About 10 years ago we did come across incidents of leopards attack on humans. That does not appear to be the case this time around. The act of attacking humans is an aberrant behaviour on part of the leopards, but this is the symptom not the cause of the problem," Athreya emphasized.

Across the world there isn't much information available to determine what causes large carnivores to turn man-eaters, but certain studies have provided some leads. Citing an example, Athreya said that research at the Large Carnivore Conservation Lab at Washington State University had found a co-relation between hunting and incidents of attacks by mountain lions on humans.

"A separate study carried out in the Russian Far East on tiger attacks on humans had found that most of the attacks had been provoked. For instance, if a tiger had lost a member of its family to hunters, it was likely to turn aggressive and attack humans," she added.

