The Zanzibar leopard was associated with Unguja, the largest island in the Zanzibar archipelago.
Unguja lies off the coast of Tanzania and is often called Zanzibar Island in everyday speech. The leopard population evolved in isolation after rising sea levels separated the island from mainland Africa, producing distinctive traits such as a smaller build and rosettes that partly break into spots.
Reginald Innes Pocock described it as a subspecies, Panthera pardus adersi, in 1932. Later molecular work led researchers to subsume it within the African leopard, Panthera pardus pardus, although the name Zanzibar leopard remains widely used for the island population.
The population was heavily persecuted and had no confirmed living record for decades; the last accepted sighting was in the early 1980s. A controversial camera-trap claim in 2018 revived speculation that a few animals might survive, so its status is often described as possibly extinct or extirpated rather than definitively extinct.