🐾 Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard

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Scientific name: Panthera uncia
Family & relatives: It belongs to the big cat genus Panthera alongside lions, tigers, and jaguars, and is most closely related to the tiger.
How to spot it: A smoky-gray cat patterned with dark rosettes, thick fur, and a hugely long, fluffy tail nearly as long as its body.

Size: Head and body measure about 1 to 1.3 meters, with a tail of roughly 80 to 100 centimeters.
Weight: It weighs about 22 to 55 kilograms, with males larger than females.
Body & adaptations: Wide fur-covered paws act like snowshoes, and a long thick tail wraps around the body for warmth and steadies it while leaping across cliffs.
Top speed: It can run in short bursts up to about 55 kilometers per hour on rugged mountain ground.
Strength: An astonishing jumper, it can leap as far as about 15 meters in a single bound across mountain gaps.
Senses: Keen eyesight for spotting prey across vast slopes and sharp hearing help it survive in the open high mountains.
Growing up: Cubs are born blind in a rocky den, open their eyes in about a week, and stay with their mother until nearly two years old.

Habitat: It lives in cold, steep, rocky alpine and subalpine zones high in the mountains, often above the tree line.
Where in the world: It ranges across the high mountains of Central and South Asia, including the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau in about 12 countries.
Territory: Home ranges are large and vary widely, from tens to hundreds of square kilometers depending on how much prey is around.

Diet: A carnivore that hunts across the mountains and gets much of its water from prey and mountain streams.
Favorite foods: It mainly hunts wild sheep and goats like blue sheep and ibex, plus marmots, hares, and birds.
How it hunts: It ambushes from above, using rocky ledges as cover, then leaps down onto prey in a steep charge.

How it moves: It climbs steep cliffs with ease, bounds across gaps, and moves surefooted over snow and loose rock.
When it is active: It is most active at dawn and dusk, hunting when its prey is on the move.
Family life: It is a solitary cat, coming together only to mate or as a mother with her cubs.
How it talks: It cannot roar; instead it mews, growls, hisses, and makes a puffing 'chuff', and it marks rocks with scent and scrapes.
Babies: After a gestation of about three to three and a half months, the female bears two to three cubs in summer and raises them alone.

Role in nature: As the top predator of high Asian mountains it keeps wild sheep and goat herds in balance, and adults have no natural predators except humans.
Conservation: It is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, threatened by poaching, loss of prey, and conflict with herders.
Dangers: Poaching for its fur and bones, retaliation by herders, and scarce prey are the leading causes of death.

How long it lives: It lives about 10 to 12 years in the wild and up to around 20 years in captivity.
In our culture: Known as the 'ghost of the mountains', it is a sacred symbol of the high Himalayas and a mascot of mountain conservation.
Where to see it: Hemis National Park in Ladakh, India is the best place to spot wild snow leopards, and several zoos worldwide house them.
Fun fact: Its tail can be nearly a meter long, and it often drapes it over its nose like a warm scarf while resting in the cold.

Video: Pixabay · Photos: Wikimedia Commons & Pixabay