A photo of a snow leopard on the icy cliffs of northern India has won the people's choice award for the 58th annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award, the Natural History Museum in London announced Thursday.

Snow leopards, like many big cats, can be quite elusive and are great at camouflaging. There are only about 6,500 left in the wild, due to threats from poaching, habitat loss and conflict with humans.


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Snow leopards live in the mountains of Central Asia. Their range extends from Russia across Mongolia into China and India. They can also be found in Nepal and Kyrgyzstan. These timid cats favour habitats with cliffs, rocky outcrops and ravines. This gives them plenty of places to hide, while also providing a clear view of their prey, which mainly consists of Himalayan blue sheep, ibexes and Marco Polo sheep.

The elusive snow leopard is one of the least studied big cats. They are solitary animals, coming together solely to mate. The females usually raise two to three cubs on their own, high up in the mountains for added protection. At the age of about 18 months, the adolescent cats leave their mothers and strike out alone. The latest studies from 2020 estimate the wild population of snow leopards at around 4,000 to 6,000 individuals.

Habitat destruction and the associated decline in prey is gradually pushing the snow leopard to the brink of extinction. In addition, humans are encroaching further into their territories. Goatherds, for example, are leading their animals deeper into snow leopard habitats in search of new grazing areas. As a result, domestic goats sometimes end up as prey. Since the loss of even one goat is a disaster for the herders, they occasionally kill snow leopards to protect their herds and livelihood. Reports show that in the period from 2008 to 2016, around 220 to 450 of these cats were killed or illegally traded each year.

Zoo and Tierpark Berlin are supporting the creation of a second Gruppa Bars unit in the south of Kyrgyzstan. Soon, camera traps will also be set up in this part of the country to establish a nationwide snow leopard monitoring programme. In the long term, these efforts should result in a decline in poaching and illegal wildlife trafficking.

On the other hand, against a backdrop of grey, beige and yellowish rocks, perhaps dotted with a few sparse, straw-colored bushes, the snow leopard becomes all but invisible even to a trained observer. And to its prey.

Already, the launch has encouraged a number of Apple partners to support snow leopard conservation. In Munich, Loctory GmbH, a company working with Apple to make their products available in German, has financially donated to the Snow Leopard Trust and agreed to help the Trust translate their outreach materials into German.

As few as 3,500 snow leopards remain in the wild throughout Central Asia, and Rutherford says global awareness and support are the key to saving the species. To find out more, go to www.snowleopard.org

Taxonomically, the snow leopard was long classified in the monotypic genus Uncia. Since phylogenetic studies revealed the relationships among Panthera species, it has since been considered a member of that genus. Two subspecies were described based on morphological differences, but genetic differences between the two have not yet been confirmed. It is therefore regarded as a monotypic species. The species is widely depicted in Kyrgyz culture.

Felis uncia was the scientific name used by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in 1777 who described a snow leopard based on an earlier description by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, assuming that the cat occurred along the Barbary Coast, in Persia, East India and China.[4] The genus name Uncia was proposed by John Edward Gray in 1854 for Asian cats with a long and thick tail.[5] Felis irbis, proposed by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg in 1830, was a skin of a female snow leopard collected in the Altai Mountains. He also clarified that several leopard (P. pardus) skins were previously misidentified as snow leopard skins.[6] Felis uncioides proposed by Thomas Horsfield in 1855 was a snow leopard skin from Nepal in the collection of the Museum of the East India Company.[7]

Uncia uncia was used by Reginald Innes Pocock in 1930 when he reviewed skins and skulls of Panthera species from Asia. He also described morphological differences between snow leopard and leopard skins.[8]Panthera baikalensis-romanii proposed by a Russian scientist in 2000 was a dark brown snow leopard skin from the Petrovsk-Zabaykalsky District in southern Transbaikal.[9]

Based on the phylogenetic analysis of the DNA sequence sampled across the living Felidae, the snow leopard forms a sister group with the tiger (P. tigris). The genetic divergence time of this group is estimated at 4.62 to 1.82 million years ago.[11][21] The snow leopard and the tiger probably diverged between 3.7 to 2.7 million years ago.[12] Panthera originates most likely in northern Central Asia. Panthera blytheae excavated in western Tibet's Ngari Prefecture is the oldest known Panthera species and exhibits skull characteristics similar to the snow leopard.[23]

The mitochondrial genomes of the snow leopard, the leopard and the lion (P. leo) are more similar to each other than their nuclear genomes, indicating that their ancestors hybridised at some point in their evolution.[24]

The snow leopard's fur is whitish to grey with black spots on the head and neck, with larger rosettes on the back, flanks and bushy tail. Its muzzle is short, its forehead domed, and its nasal cavities are large. The fur is thick with hairs measuring 5 to 12 cm (2.0 to 4.7 in) in length, and its underbelly is whitish. They are stocky, short-legged, and slightly smaller than other cats of the genus Panthera, reaching a shoulder height of 56 cm (22 in), and ranging in head to body size from 75 to 150 cm (30 to 59 in). Its tail is 80 to 105 cm (31 to 41 in) long.[25] Males average 45 to 55 kg (99 to 121 lb), and females 35 to 40 kg (77 to 88 lb).[26] Occasionally, large males reaching 75 kg (165 lb) have been recorded, and small females under 25 kg (55 lb).[27]Its canine teeth are 28.6 mm (1.13 in) long and are more slender than those of the other Panthera species.[28]In relation to the length of their skull and width of their palate, they have large nasal openings, which allow for increasing the volume of air inhaled with each breath, and at the same time for warming and humidifying cold dry air.[29] They are not especially adapted to high-altitude hypoxia.[30]

The snow leopard shows several adaptations for living in a cold, mountainous environments. Its small rounded ears help to minimize heat loss. Their broad paws well distribute the body weight for walking on snow, and have fur on their undersides to enhance the grip on steep and unstable surfaces; they also help to minimize heat loss. Its long and flexible tail helps to balance the cat in the rocky terrain. The tail is very thick due to fat storage, and is covered in a thick layer of fur, which allows the cat to use it like a blanket to protect its face when asleep.[31][32]

The snow leopard differs from the other Panthera species by a shorter muzzle, an elevated forehead, a vertical chin and a less developed posterior process of the lower jaw.[33] They cannot roar despite its partly ossified hyoid bone, as their 9 mm (0.35 in) short vocal folds provide little resistance to airflow.[34][35]

In summer, the snow leopard usually lives above the tree line on alpine meadows and in rocky regions at elevations of 2,700 to 6,000 m (8,900 to 19,700 ft). In winter, they descend to elevations around 1,200 to 2,000 m (3,900 to 6,600 ft). They prefer rocky, broken terrain, and can move in 85 cm (33 in) deep snow, but prefers to use existing trails made by other animals.[27]

It is solitary and mostly active at dawn till early morning, and again in afternoons and early evenings. They mostly rest near cliffs and ridges that provide vantage points and shade. In Nepal's Shey Phoksundo National Park, the home ranges of five adult radio-collared snow leopards largely overlapped, though they rarely met. Their individual home ranges ranged from 12 to 39 km2 (4.6 to 15.1 sq mi). Males moved between 0.5 and 5.45 km (0.31 and 3.39 mi) per day, and females between 0.2 and 2.25 km (0.12 and 1.40 mi), measured in straight lines between survey points. Since they often zigzagged in the precipitous terrain, they actually moved up to 7 km (4.3 mi) in a single night.[39]Up to 10 individuals inhabit an area of 100 km2 (40 sq mi); in habitats with sparse prey, an area of 1,000 km2 (400 sq mi) usually supports only five individuals.[40]

Snow leopards leave scent marks to indicate their territories and common travel routes. They scrape the ground with the hind feet before depositing urine or feces, but also spray urine onto rocks.[27] Their urine contains many characteristic low molecular weight compounds with diverse functional groups including pentanol, hexanol, heptanol, 3-octanone, nonanal and indole, which possibly play a role in chemical communication.[42]

The snow leopard is a carnivore and actively hunts its prey. Its preferred wild prey species are Himalayan blue sheep (Pseudois nayaur), Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus), argali (Ovis ammon), markhor (Capra falconeri) and wild goat (C. aegagrus). It also preys on domestic livestock.[43][44] It prefers prey ranging in weight from 36 to 76 kg (79 to 168 lb), but also hunts smaller mammals such as Himalayan marmot (Marmota himalayana), pika and vole species. Its diet depends on prey availability and varies across its range and season. In the Himalayas, it preys mostly on Himalayan blue sheep, Siberian ibex (C. sibirica), white-bellied musk deer (Moschus leucogaster) and wild boar (Sus scrofa). In the Karakoram, Tian Shan, Altai and Mongolia's Tost Mountains, its main prey consists of Siberian ibex, Thorold's deer (Cervus albirostris), Siberian roe deer (Capreolus pygargus) and argali.[45][46] Snow leopard feces collected in northern Pakistan also contained remains of rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta), masked palm civet (Paguma larvata), Cape hare (Lepus capensis), house mouse (Mus musculus), Kashmir field mouse (Apodemus rusiges), grey dwarf hamster (Cricetulus migratorius) and Turkestan rat (Rattus pyctoris).[47] In 2017, a snow leopard was photographed carrying a freshly killed woolly flying squirrel (Eupetaurus cinereus) near Gangotri National Park.[48] In Mongolia, domestic sheep comprises less than 20% of its diet, although wild prey has been reduced and interactions with people are common.[46] It is capable of killing most ungulates in its habitat, with the probable exception of the adult male wild yak. It also eats grass and twigs.[27] 2351a5e196

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