Touch base with some of your favorite animals; watch Leopards feed, laze and play in the open, and if you’re lucky you’ll see plenty of them as Yala is known to have the highest density of Leopards in the world. Listen to the elephants trumpet, monkeys chatter, sloth bear grunts and the melodious bird song from the verdant woods. Watch out! There’s plenty more to stop you on your tracks and let your heart pound faster. A total of 32 species of mammals have been recorded. The threatened species are sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), Leopard (Panthera pardus) kotiya, elephant (Elephas maximus), water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), Wild boar (Sus scrofa), spotted deer (Axis axis ceylonessis), sambar (Cervus unicolor) and golden jackal (Canis aureus). As the area was formerly a farming region, there is plenty of open grassland which makes spotting elephants easy. There is also a plantation of teak beyond the southern boundary, below the dam, which was planted before the declaration of the park.