Camera traps placed in the Javan rainforest have captured striking images of beautiful and critically endangered Javan leopards. While resting, grooming, and rolling around, one of the leopards resembles a bigger, spotted version of the average house cat; the others move quickly through the forest.

Researcher Age Kridalaksana, with the Center for International Forestry Research, placed 30 cameras in Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park in West Java, letting them record rainforest scenes for one month. When Kridalaksana came back to retrieve the images, he found that among the thousands of images of deer and civets and birds were three Javan leopards – two spotted, one black.

The Javan leopard population is believed to comprise fewer than 250 adults, with deforestation, human conflicts, and a declining prey base among major threats to the population. Since leopards normally have a territory spanning several square miles, seeing three in one area is unusual.

Black Javan Leopard. Age Kridalaksana/CIFOR

"It's too much, if we compare it with the prey – like deer, like mouse, like civet," Kridalaksana says in a related video. "We assume that the condition of the ecosystem is not balanced."

Java hosts the second-largest tract of primary rainforest in the world, home to rhinos, tigers, leopards, and other endangered mammals. But growing cities and villages are chipping away at the forests, squeezing animals into smaller and smaller spaces, and making it hard for many – like the leopards – to survive.

Video: CIFOR stock footage library/Vimeo

Hat-tip to Mongabay.com.