Leopard

Leopards share African savanna hunting grounds with cheetahs but pursue the opposite strategy: stealth and power rather than speed and pursuit. Where cheetahs chase prey across open ground, leopards ambush from cover. Where cheetahs can only hunt in daylight, leopards hunt primarily at night. Where cheetahs must eat immediately before larger predators steal their kill, leopards drag prey into trees for protected consumption.

This strategic differentiation allows both species to coexist. Cheetahs take prey in open areas during day; leopards take prey near cover at night. The same territory supports both predators because they're accessing different slices of the prey population through different capabilities. Neither strategy is superior—they're optimized for different competitive contexts.

The business parallel is differentiated approaches to the same market. Leopards and cheetahs are like companies competing in the same industry through fundamentally different strategies—Southwest Airlines (efficiency, point-to-point) versus American Airlines (hub-and-spoke, premium service). Both capture value from the same basic market but through different mechanisms that don't directly compete. Leopard strategy shows that matching a competitor's capability isn't the only response; developing orthogonal capabilities can create space for coexistence.