Snow LeopardsThe ghost cat

Have you ever heard of a snow leopard? If you are attentive, you probably have.

but if you aren’t up-to-date on the times, have no fear, for here if your guide to all that

you need to know about snow leopards.

The first thing that I am going to talk about is the physical abilities of snow

leopards. Naturally, snow leopards are mammals, just like normal leopards. Snow

leopards have a wide and short nasal cavity that helps warm the air that snow leopards

breath. The snow leopard also has long paws that act as snowshoes, along with strong

chest muscles coupled with short front and long back limbs, which allows the snow

leopard to jump the surprising length of 30 feet! The aforementioned chest muscles also

help with climbing up the rocky mountain climate in which the snow leopard lives. The

snow leopard’s long tail acts as a rudder and it couples as a scarf. Handy, huh? But a

snow leopard doesn’t need to have a winter coat, because a snow leopard’s fur is

incredibly dense, measuring at twelve centimeters (or five inches, if you prefer that)

long! That fur isn’t only handy, but it is beautiful, too! The snow leopard’s fur colors are

white, yellow(ish), and smoky black, while rosettes can be anywhere from a dark grey to

black. This also acts as camouflage in the rocky terrain that the snow leopard lives in. A

snow leopard is usually around four feet, four inches and is usually under 110 pounds.

Short ears that point straight also are important to the snow leopard. Now you

understand why snow leopards are considered perfect for their habitat by many

scientists

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Snow leopard cubs

Since I have already talked about the physical features of snow leopards, it

makes sense to talk about the behavior of snow leopards. The most notable thing about

snow leopards is that they are very shy, and even more elusive creatures. This, coupled

with the number of snow leopards alive today (as low as 3,500, if you were wondering)

gives the snow leopard a well-earned nickname - the ghost cat. The snow leopard has a

crepuscular activity pattern. (If you are wondering what crepuscular means, it means

that the animal is active during twilight.) However, this pattern changes depending on

the amount of human beings that are present. Examples of this could be that there is a

one-man hiker. Since there is only one person, he is a lot more likely to see a snow

leopard than, say, a townsfolk, because if there are lots of people, a snow leopard will

become nocturnal, while is there are no people, the opposite is true. Snow leopards are

solitary, and the only time that you will see adult snow leopards together is during the

mating season. Snow leopards will often patrol their home range, but they don’t try to

fight other snow leopards. They go on patrol to find more prey, because prey is scarce.

During the mating season, male snow leopards go and mark their territory around

topographic features, like cliffs, ravines, and outrocks (rocks that jut out an abnormal

amount) to attract females and say, “Hey! I’m a bachelor here!” though they don’t

actually say that. About two years after the snow leopards cubs are born, the mother

leaves the cubs to live on their own. The father leaves a lot sooner, immediately after

the future mother’s egg has been fertilized. The snow leopard’s vocabulary includes

sounds like: purring, a mew, hissing, growling, a moaning sound, a yowl, but not a roar.

Although some people think otherwise, facts show that a snow leopard has never

attacked a human being. In fact, snow leopards will run away if it notices a human

being.

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A snow leopard’s life cycle is quite interesting.The time that snow leopards mate

is January through the middle of March. After the snow leopards mate, it takes from

ninety-three to one hundred ten days for the cubs to be born. Usually, however, it takes

around fourteen weeks (ninety-eight days) for cubs to be born. On average, two through

three cubs are born per. pregnancy. Once the cubs are around eighteen to twenty-two

months old, they start to become independent. They eat solid food at two months of

age, and they start to hunt around three months of age. Male snow leopards become

sexually mature at age four, while female snow leopards become sexually mature at

age three. Most captive snow leopards live to be around twenty-two years of age, while

in the wild, snow leopards may live to be around ten years of age. (This age was

calculated from a male snow leopard’s tooth, so this is by no means an average.)

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What might be the main reason for snow leopard deaths is loss of prey, causing it

to have to hunt livestock, often getting it killed. A snow leopard can take down an animal

three times it’s weight. To give you an idea of what that would be like, imagine a three

hundred pound goat. A snow leopards diet can constrain of grasses and vegetation,

bharal (otherwise known as blue sheep), capra ibex, wild pigs, marmots, and various

birds. (often the birds will be scavengers that try to get some of the meat from a snow

leopard’s kill. unlucky them.) Usually the snow leopard will take three to four days to eat

an animal, and during that time, the snow leopard will be around the animal all the time,

protecting it from scavengers. Snow leopards are opportunistic hunters, so when they

see an open corral with domesticated animals in it, they will often attack and kill the

animals. Snow leopards, as said earlier, will eat grasses and vegetation, but they eat an

unusual amount of it. Scientists are not sure why snow leopards eat so much grasses

and vegetation. It may be that there are vitamins essential for snow leopards in this

strange and weird diet, it may help digestion, it may even help kill parasites.

Another reason that probably kills the majority of snow leopards is loss of habitat.

Often a snow leopard will lose it’s home to farmland, causing it to move somewhere

else, or die. Since the snow leopard only lives high in the mountains of central asia, this

could be harder than it looks. The general area that a snow leopard inhabits is around

two million square kilometers, or one million, two hundred forty-two, seven hundred

forty-two square miles. That is around the size of greenland or mexico! Overall, snow

leopards live in twelve countries. out of these twelve countries, over sixty percent of the

snow leopards live in china. In the Himalayas, snow leopards live about three to four

thousand fifty feet above sea level, while in Mongolia and Russia, they live at much

lower altitudes, around one thousand feet above sea level. Snow leopards like cliffs,

outrock, and ravines because there are a lot of good dens, and it is easy to watch and

catch prey. It is also incredibly cold and dry. Something that is kind of interesting is that

a snow leopard can travel twenty seven miles per. twelve hours. (That’s two and twenty-

five hundredths per. hour!)

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Some of the major threats posed to snow leopards come from human beings.

Poaching is a major problem because snow leopards a valued for their beautiful fur.

One snow leopards coat is worth three thousand USD. Local people suffer from a bad

economy, and oftentimes they will go out and sell the fur for money to support their

family. It doesn't help matters with the fact that snow leopard bones are used in many

different local medicines. When farmers protect areas from snow leopards, instead of

putting a top of sorts on top of the fence, they will take their guns and shoot any snow

leopards that they see because snow leopards often will attack livestock because they

can’t find any wild prey. This is in part to herding and taking over snow leopard

homeland, but it is also because miners will often mine open pit mines, and they will use

harmful chemicals to extract minerals.

One thing that we could do to help snow leopards is, instead of farming, locals

could start a tourism business. Many people would be willing to pay lots of money to

see the Himalayas, and they might be able to see the elusive snow leopard! Panthera is

also studying snow leopards at their labs.

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cited resources

● www.snowleopard.org/learn/cat-facts

● http://www.nwf.org/Kids/Ranger-Rick/Animals/Mammals/Snow-Leopards.aspx

● http://www.panthera.org/species/snow-leopard

● http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/snow_leopard/ - picture five

● http://www.snowleopard.org/researcher-decode-wild-snow-leopards-diet -picture three

● http://www.snowleopard.org/learn/cat-facts/habitat -picture four

● http://www.snowleopard.org/learn/cat-facts/life-cycle -picture two

● http://bestfreewallpapers.info/Baby%20Animals%20Wallpapers/slides/

Snow_Leopard_Cubs_1600%20x%201200.html - picture one

● http://www.metric-conversions.org/length/kilometers-to-miles.htm -converting kilometers

to miles.

See! That wasn’t too hard, was it?