A shepherd from Mongolia with a tame leopard. Snow leopard: legend of the mountains. Facts about snow leopards

For the third year in a row, the scientific secretary of the Leningrad Zoo, Galina Afanasyeva, celebrates her birthday with the leopard Gulya. They were born under the same star - July 9th.

On this day two years ago, the couple snow leopards Sarah and Arbat had their first child, a daughter, at the zoo. The mother refused to feed the baby, and director Irina Skiba asked Galina Alekseevna to take on maternal care for the newborn. The offer came over the phone at the moment when festive table was set and guests were gathering. An ornithologist by profession, Galina Alekseevna had never had to feed mammals before, but overcoming her doubts, she agreed. The step was also desperate because the zoo had no experience in artificially feeding snow leopards.

A blind kitten weighing 491 grams and 15 centimeters long, who arrived to the Afanasyevs on the owner’s birthday, became the epicenter of attention, care, love and anxiety of the whole family, including the dog. Affectionate name The head of the family gave it to the girl. “And while they were happily strolling,” Galina recalls, “the little walker was peeling off my skin with its sharp, non-retractable claws.”


(Later the little leopard learned to hide its claws - author's note). Due to the fact that Gulya did not receive the protective substances contained in maternal colostrum in the first hours after birth, she turned out to be vulnerable to microbes. In the first month of her life, she suffered a whole bunch of diseases - rickets, pneumonia, enteritis, diabetes, hepatitis - each of which could have been fatal. The zoo veterinarians rose at night at the first signal from Galina Alekseevna. She herself gave Gula injections every two hours and gave her milk from a pipette. The little leopard survived all adversities.

Gulya began to recover, gradually turning from a runt who had gone bald during her illness into a beauty. She was a very active, energetic kitten, playing "hunt" up to 6 hours a day. IN big family she always had a partner, who usually acted as prey. The most exciting hunt began when daughter Ira returned from school. At this time the apartment was shaking with running, jumping, the roar of falling things, war cries and joyful cries.

At the age of four months, much to the family's regret, Gulya returned to the zoo. She had a hard time with the change of environment, and to help her adapt, Galina Alekseevna lived with her in a cage for a couple of weeks, leaving for a short time when Gulya was sleeping - to have a snack and take a shower. Visitors to the zoo, observing the man in the cage, made a variety of remarks, and Galina Alekseevna was forced to fence herself off with a curtain.

The natural parents living in the next cage greeted their daughter with hostility. It is not yet known whether they will have any more offspring. Snow leopards do not reproduce well in captivity. As for Gulya, she is expected to marry a young leopard growing up in the Kazan Zoo. When Gulya reaches puberty, they will be introduced.

Two years for Galina Alekseevna passed in endless worries about Gula. She cannot go on vacation, cannot fully relax on the weekend. The little leopard's attachment to her requires frequent communication. The foster mother feeds the girl, takes her for walks, and plays “hunt” with her. Every week early in the morning he is taken to the Central Park of Culture and Culture. Walking in nature has a beneficial effect on the leopard. She brushes her fur on the grass, breathes fresh air, enjoying the space. When Gulya becomes an adult female, and this could happen in just six months, walks in the park will stop, and she will turn out to be a recluse. This prospect upsets Galina Alekseevna most of all.

So far the little leopard is not showing any signs of aggression. In the photo you see the process of feeding her raw chicken. Not everyone dares to hand-feed even their own meat. affectionate cat, and Galina Alekseevna trusts wild beast: tears off pieces and, without hiding his fingers, puts them into the mouth of the predator, and he delicately takes them.

The cage door is open so that journalists can film this amazing meal. Chicken is an ordinary food in Guli’s diet, but on her birthday it looked like a festive dinner. Before this, Gulya participated in a lecture dedicated to herself with a film demonstration in the zoo lecture hall. For the second year now, on her birthday, the little leopard Galina Alekseevna tells the public everything about Gula and demonstrates the endless series that she has been filming about her from the first days of her life.

During the lecture (the hall, despite the thirty-degree heat, was full of spectators) Gulya was on the stage. She suffered from the heat, but behaved exemplary. Occasionally assisted department head carnivorous mammals Irene Yurievna Maltseva called Gulya over to pet her. Sometimes Gulya herself would approach Galina Alekseevna and rub herself against her, demanding affection. After the lecture, the couple paraded around the zoo, causing delight among visitors along the way.

For her birthday, Gula was given toys, mainly her favorite balls. Rubber balls are enough for one bite, so it’s better to give basketball ones. It was this kind of ball that Galina Alekseevna’s daughter, Ira, brought to the zoo on Gula’s birthday. Another was presented by a fan who did not identify herself, which especially touched Galina Alekseevna. The birthday girl received congratulations from her guardian - the Notary Chamber of St. Petersburg.

In honor of Guli's birthday, the zoo held a horse show on a riding circuit with the participation of a two-month-old camel Sharidu. This was her first appearance in public.

On this day, the zoo held a quiz dedicated to snow leopards. On the same day, a pleasant unplanned event occurred: the doe gave birth to a calf. Another doe gave birth on July 4th. The babies are healthy and very touching.

It's sad to say, but this birthday with the birthday girl herself may be her last. In a year, Gulya will be an adult, and her peaceful disposition will probably change.

Attended a birthday party
Natalya Rubleva,
photo by the author

Powerful and hardy, snow leopards, also called snow leopards, live quietly where most other felines cannot survive. Nature has endowed them with thick fur that reliably protects them from frost, sharp teeth, powerful paws and developed intelligence, so wildlife This predator has almost no enemies, with the possible exception of people.

Facts about snow leopards

• These big cats are still poorly studied because they live mainly in hard-to-reach areas.
• The weight of an adult snow leopard can reach 55 kg, and the length of the body including the tail exceeds 2 meters.
• Unlike Amur tiger, the spots on the skin of the snow leopard are not continuous, but rather ring-shaped ().
• Snow leopards are facing extinction, despite the fact that hunting them is strictly prohibited. All over the world there are different estimates, from 3 to 7 thousand snow leopards. They are included in both the Russian and international Red Books.
• Judging by archaeological finds, snow leopards lived on Earth already 1.2-1.4 thousand years ago. Their fossilized remains found in Pakistan date back to this age.
• Snow leopards can purr like regular domestic cats. But, on the contrary, they do not know how to growl.
• Raised from childhood, snow leopard kittens quickly get used to humans and become tame.
• The snow leopard rarely hunts mice and hares, preferring more big catch. Often his victims are larger than him.
• Leopards are often called leopards, so because of external resemblance snow leopards began to be called snow leopards ().
• For shelter from bad weather, snow leopards usually make dens in caves and rock crevices.
• The long and thick tail of the snow leopard serves as a steering wheel and counterweight, helping to maintain balance while jumping.
• Male snow leopards are usually a third larger than females.
• Thanks to their wide paws, snow leopards can calmly walk even on loose snow without falling into it.
• Females nursing kittens wrap them with their fluffy tails to protect them from the cold.
• Snow leopards can take a running jump of 6-8 meters.
• Snow leopards prefer to live in the mountains, at an altitude of several kilometers. So, in the Himalayas they are sometimes found at an altitude of 5-5.5 km, and this is the height of the peak of the Russian Elbrus, and Atmosphere pressure here is twice as low as at sea level ().
• The hard tubercles that dot the surface of snow leopards' tongues help them easily separate meat from bones.

• Females of these big cats give birth once every 2 years, usually giving birth to 2-3 kittens. They spend the first two years of their life with their mother and then leave.
• Snow leopards are the only cats on the planet that live so high in the mountains.
• Extremely sharp vision allows them to see white prey on white snow from several kilometers away.
• From a biological point of view, the snow leopard's closest relative is the tiger ().
• In captivity, snow leopards live 20 years, and in the wild - 11-12. The officially registered longevity record is 28 years.
• Snow leopards never attack people. Why is unknown, although, of course, it is for the better.
• They lead predominantly night look life, preferring to sleep in a safe shelter during the day.
• October 23 is considered International Snow Leopard Day.
• Unlike most other felines, snow leopards have round, rather than vertical, pupils.
• Despite the fact that each male snow leopard has “his own” territory, he will not show aggression if he meets another male on it.
• The snow leopard's paw pads are covered with fur, like those of a lynx. This also helps him not to fall into the snow ().
• The length of the snow leopard's tail is comparable to the length of its entire body.
• Among all land predators The snow leopard is the most secretive, and that is why it is so poorly studied.
• Snow leopards spend their entire lives alone, and males meet females only during a short mating season. The male does not take part in the fate of the offspring, placing all responsibility on the female.
• The word “irbis” translated from one of the Turkic languages ​​means “snow cat”.
• Snow leopards are no strangers to fun. Researchers have observed them skiing down snow-covered slopes while lying on their backs, and then repeating this activity without any purpose, just for fun.

Of all the big cats, the snow leopard is the least studied. This is a very secretive and cautious animal, and the inaccessibility of its habitat makes it even more difficult to study this mysterious predator. Next, I will share my knowledge with you and tell you everything I know today about the snow leopard.
First, let's look at the name. Nowadays it is customary to call a snow leopard a leopard, although in fact the word “leopard” is actually a synonym for the word “leopard”. In ancient times, leopards in Rus' were called “leopards.” The word "leopard" is of Turkic origin, and "leopard" is of Latin origin, which literally means "spotted lion." With time foreign word“leopard” took root in the Russian language and leopards began to be called leopards, and the snow leopard is still called leopard. Its other name is snow leopard. Be that as it may, this is a completely different animal from the leopard. And although he outwardly resembles his brighter relative, their characters are completely different.
Although the snow leopard is a member of the Pantherinae subfamily, it is noticeably different from its other members. Previously, it was included in the genus Panthera together with the tiger, lion, jaguar and leopard, then it was separated into separate genus Uncia. However, in Lately The phylogeny of the snow leopard was revised and its close relationship with the tiger was revealed, after which this type was again placed in the genus Panthera. He is much less aggressive than other panthers, and his roar is not as powerful as that of representatives genus Panthera. In addition to roaring, the snow leopard can make many other sounds. For example, he purrs, just like domestic cat, and can also emit a completely unusual roar. It's very difficult for me to describe it in words. I have never heard such sounds from any other cat species. Probably, such sounds serve as a call for snow leopards during the breeding season. Well, in general it must be said that the snow leopard is a rather quiet animal.
The snow leopard has a very strong, elongated body with relatively short and very thick legs, which, due to their width, are perfectly adapted for moving around deep snow. The hind limbs are slightly longer than the forelimbs. Thanks to this, the snow leopard jumps excellently and is one of the best jumpers among felines (and, perhaps, among animals in general).
The snow leopard's eyes are large and very expressive, with an intelligent and, I would say, deep look. The iris of the eye is gray-green (with a bias in one direction or another), which harmonizes perfectly with the overall smoky color. Constricting in bright light, the pupils of his eyes do not take on an elliptical shape, as in most small cats, but a round one, characteristic of panther cats. The fur of the snow leopard is soft to the touch, long and very thick. The tail is very long and fluffy. Such a tail helps the animal not to lose balance when it makes acrobatic jumps. In addition, such a fluffy tail can also serve as a kind of blanket, helping the animal not to waste heat during sleep. Weight ranges from approximately 25 to 75 kg. On average, the weight of adult animals is 35-55 kg (depending on gender).
These beautiful animals have a wonderful disposition. They are not at all aggressive towards humans and will never attack them unless the person himself provokes the animal. Getting to people in early age, a leopard can become very attached to its owner and become completely tame. In this regard, this is far from a leopard; the leopard, as noted above, has a completely different character.
The snow leopard is widespread in Central and Central Asia. It lives in mountains up to 5500 and even 6000 meters above sea level. In winter, following the ungulates, the leopard descends lower. Being excellent climbers, the snow leopard is perfectly adapted to life in such harsh conditions.
Its prey is most often mountain goats and rams, and at low altitudes deer and wild boars. Smaller animals, such as hares, marmots, black grouse, etc., are no exception.
Like all other large cats, the snow leopard can hunt both during the day and at night, but most often at dusk.
The snow leopard has virtually no natural enemies. Where it lives, the leopard is the top predator. True, at lower altitudes conflicts with wolves can arise, but this happens extremely rarely. The only enemy of the snow leopard is man. It is thanks to some irresponsible representatives of this most dangerous of predators that the Earth has ever known that snow leopards are becoming fewer and fewer. Its habitat is gradually decreasing. In the Caucasus they have long disappeared. The snow leopard's relative, the leopard, is hanging on there with all its strength.
The individual ranges of the animals are simply huge. I won’t give exact figures in order not to lie, but the hunting territory of the snow leopard is, as a rule, larger than that of the leopard.
A loner by nature, the leopard avoids meeting others of its own kind, except, of course, for the breeding season, which usually occurs at the beginning of the year. The female chooses some secluded place, for example a cave, or a rock crevice, in which she brings her offspring. Kittens are born approximately 100 days after mating. There can be from one to five kittens in a litter, but most often there are two or three. The weight of newborns is approximately 450-550 grams. The first days the kittens are blind and completely helpless. The eyes open only after a week. Leopard cubs feed on milk until three months, after which the mother gradually begins to wean them from this and teach them to hunt. By the age of two, young leopards become completely independent. At this time, they reach puberty.
The lifespan of a leopard can be more than 20 years, but in natural conditions this most likely happens rarely.

Classification:

Family: Felidae (felines)
Subfamily: Pantherinae (panthers)
Genus: Panthera/Uncia (snow leopards or snow leopards)
Species: Panthera/Uncia uncia (snow leopard, or snow leopard)

Photo gallery:

Skulls:

Habitat:

In Mongolia they say that only happy man. In Russia today the saying is truer than ever: we have so few of these animals left that meeting one of them is truly happiness.

In April 2013, a female snow leopard named SL1 slowly descended along the Western Sayan Range to the mouth of one of the small mountain rivers flowing into the Yenisei. She followed her usual route to the ibex trail. Halfway through the journey, SL1 stopped in front of a camera trap - one of 40 hidden cameras installed in the Sayano-Shushensky Nature Reserve in the south Krasnoyarsk Territory. The female was breathing heavily, sticking out her tongue. A noose was squeezing her neck - a torn “noose”, or “gallows”, the cheapest and cruelest trap. Last year, inspectors removed 120 thousand of these snares on the territory of the reserve - most often poachers place them on musk deer, but leopards are also caught in them.

The noose on SL1's neck was causing purulent wounds to bleed. The female was pregnant. A few months later, in the lens of the same camera trap, she appeared not alone: ​​three kittens followed on her mother’s heels. The sick, already dying SL1 was still feeding her kittens with milk.

A year later, the reserve engineer Tamara Alekseevna Makashova and I sailed on a boat to the mouth of that very mountain river. The speedboat stops, we jump from the stern onto the rocks and look for the ungulate trail. At the top, three young ibex, the main food of snow leopards, quickly run along the rocky ledge. Behind last 24 hours We are meeting Capricorns for the fifth time, but we don’t even dare to dream of a date with a snow leopard. Having worked in the reserve for thirty years, Tamara Alekseevna had never seen a rare cat. The chances of accidentally spotting a leopard in the local mountains are zero: the Shushensky group is considered the most stable in Russia, but it is formed by no more than seven or eight cats living on an area of ​​almost a thousand square kilometers. The only female bearing offspring, the same SL1, has not appeared in camera traps for a year. Her kittens also disappeared without a trace: most likely, left without a mother, they died of hunger.

Valery Maleev Eme with three-month-old kittens. Once every two years in May, a female snow leopard brings from two to five kittens, which follow their mother on their heels for a year and a half.

For Russian zoologists today, every snow leopard counts. In all of Russia, there are no more than two to three dozen snow leopards (“irbis” is an ancient Turkic word meaning “snow cat”), and in the world, according to various estimates, from four to six and a half thousand individuals. Perhaps only specialists who study leopards in the mountains have the opportunity to see the animal. For the rest of the inhabitants of these places, the snow leopard remains the same mythical creature, as well as big Foot. The only inhabitant of high mountains among all cats, the snow leopard lives in places where it is difficult for humans to pass. Partly because of this, the leopard became a sacred beast among the peoples Central Asia, and for scientists - one of the most interesting and difficult animals to study.

“For Mongolian herders, snow leopards are aristocrats, blue blood, cats of the highlands – in every sense “ high society“,” photographer Valery Maleev tells me about his trips to Mongolia already in Moscow. To make a portrait of a snow leopard, Valery traveled to the mountains of the Gobi Altai more than ten times. In the past, an enthusiastic hunter, Maleev exchanged his gun for a camera and last years removes wild cats Russia. Snow Leopard occupies a special place among them. “I really wanted to meet his gaze, to look into the eyes of the true owner of the mountains,” Maleev explains his interest. It is hopeless to plan a photo hunt for a snow leopard in Russia, so Valery went to border Mongolia to follow his dream. The number of animals there is much higher than in our country.

In all of Russia there are no more than two or three dozen snow leopards.

The entire modern range of the endangered cat species Uncia uncia (snow leopard, snow leopard, or snow leopard) is limited to the mountains of Central Asia and includes 13 countries. Russia is the northernmost of them, and the southernmost are India and Myanmar. The largest number of snow leopards—almost half of the world's total population—are believed to live in China. Everywhere, except Russia, the snow leopard lives above two thousand meters above sea level. In our country, its lands are also taken over by lower areas - in the Sayan Mountains the leopard descends to five hundred meters and below.

The first records about the “irbiz, a spotted cat with long tail and lush fur,” appeared in trade books of Siberia in the 16th century, but scientists tried to study and describe the inaccessible beast only three centuries later, and long years serious scientific reports about the snow leopard were reduced to retelling the legends of the Siberian peoples. “They say that the snow leopard is often found in the area of ​​the Uda River... the Yakuts are so afraid of it that they call it the most terrible and, having encountered its trail, do not dare to step over it, unless through a bow placed on the trail” - such a note about the snow leopard left by the famous German-Russian scientist and traveler Peter Simon Pallas in 1811. Before it was possible to prove that Pallas was mistaken and confused the snow leopard with a tiger, a century and a half passed, and incorrect data about the animal’s range spread throughout hundreds of scientific articles.

Ridiculous errors in descriptions of the snow leopard were reproduced in textbooks until the 1980s. Some “blunders” can still be found today. “Is it true that leopards sleep in vulture nests?” I ask Alexander Zolotykh, a researcher at the Sayano-Shushensky Nature Reserve, referring to a well-known encyclopedia. At first Alexander laughs for a long time, and then answers: “This cannot be, this is outdated data from the time of Przhevalsky.” Scientists consider even the name “snow leopard” paradoxical, since the snow leopard does not like to walk on snow and avoids it. In addition, experts cannot find right place snow leopard in the classification: due to the poor development of the vocal fold and the inability to growl, the predator cannot be strictly classified as a leopard, that is, big cats Therefore, many zoologists classify the snow leopard as a separate intermediate genus between large and small cats.

Ridiculous errors in descriptions of the snow leopard were reproduced in textbooks until the 1980s. Some “blunders” can still be found today: “Is it true that leopards sleep in vultures’ nests?”

Over the past 20–30 years, it has been possible to obtain reliable data on the snow leopard. One of the most important and interesting results was the deciphering of the predator genome, carried out by international group scientists in 2012–2013. Experts have discovered a unique sequence of amino acids in the snow leopard's DNA, which determines its excellent adaptability to life in the mountains. Later, one of the parts of this sequence, thanks to which the leopard does not suffer from hypoxia, was found in rock rats - African species mountain rodents.

In Russia, employees of the Sayano-Shushensky Nature Reserve and the Russian Academy of Sciences have done a tremendous amount of work. But due to the small number of the animal, many scientific data about the snow leopard in our country are still contradictory. However, the main concern of Russian scientists is to preserve the population. There is little time left for special research, and it is more convenient to conduct it in Mongolia.

On his first trip to the Gobi Altai, Valery Maleev was lucky. He settled down for the night in the mountains under open air, and when he woke up, he saw in front of him a beautiful female snow leopard: on sheer cliff she dealt with Capricorn. The spots on the cat's skin showed its advanced age. (The pattern of spots on snow leopards is always unique, but over the years it becomes indistinct and blurry on the body, while maintaining clarity on the head and paws). Valery spent many hours with this female, whom the Mongolian guides nicknamed Eme, that is, “grandmother”.

The fact that Eme calmly allowed the man to watch her and even fell asleep in the presence of Valery is not surprising. “Unlike tigers, snow leopards do not have the human fear gene,” explained the presenter Researcher Sayano-Shushensky Nature Reserve Sergei Istomov, who wrote one of the best books in the world about the snow leopard - “Irbis of the Western Sayan”. “This gene simply did not have time to form in snow leopards, since, living in the mountains, they rarely meet people.”

For many weeks, Maleev patiently watched Eme: how she hunted, how she left marks - scratches, how she raised and taught her kids to hunt. On a narrow isthmus between two mountain ranges, Maleev met two more adult leopards. The photographer called this place “the station for Capricorns.” The number of ungulates here was sufficient for several snow leopards to count on prey at once. To catch prey, Eme always lay in ambush above the ungulate path and, in several long (up to five meters!) jumps, overtook and killed the prey. Slow and graceful, the snow leopard will never be able to catch up with the ibex on the plains, and it needs a height advantage to hunt successfully. It is almost impossible to notice a predator lurking on the rocks. “Only a happy person can see a snow leopard,” as we remember, local shepherds say, meaning a very specific happiness: whoever spots the predator will be able to drive it away from livestock.

But today everything has changed. Local shepherds are only happy when a snow leopard takes a sheep from the herd: for this, the local representative of the Snow Leopard Trust program pays decent compensation. Money for payments is allocated from sales in Europe and the USA soft toys from felt, which are made by shepherds' wives. Although, as scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences note, there are still problems with snow leopards in Mongolia.

Last November, to a shepherd's yurt in the Mongolian national park A lone snow leopard kitten wandered into Jargalant. The kid jumped from the cliff onto the roof of the yurt, where the meat lay. The shepherds heard the kitten, caught it, put it in a bag and took it back to the mountains. “They thought they were doing the right thing, but I believe that they doomed the animal to certain death,” Viktor Lukarevsky, senior researcher at the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences, comments on the case. “If a kitten comes to people for food, it means that it has lost its mother: the female never leaves her cubs hungry.”

Kittens can become orphans doomed to starvation if their mother falls into a trap before the kids learn to hunt. Back in the 1970s, zoologists found out that snow leopards live and hunt in small groups, in the center of which there is an alpha female and an alpha male. The number of females always determines how stable the group of snow leopards is. Every two years, the female gives birth to two to four kittens. For a year and a half, the kids follow their mother literally on their heels, but the day comes when their destinies change. Young males leave the mother's territory, females remain within the maternal domain, but occupy territories on the outskirts. “This is called the “wave theory,” says Sergei Istomov, “the area on which one group of leopards lives increases, as if in waves from the center to the periphery, with the birth of each new female.”

It is the females that determine the structure of the snow leopard population. Viktor Lukarevsky believes that it is possible to find out the prospects for the survival of the snow leopard in Russia only by determining the number of females living in Russia. “In addition, we are obliged to save kittens left without a mother and use them to restore damaged or lost groups, to patch up gaps in the leopard’s habitat, this the only way restoration of the snow leopard habitat in Russia,” says Lukarevsky. – It is necessary to set up specialized centers for orphan kittens, help them get back on their feet and gradually release them back into the wild. Such a program is already being successfully implemented with Amur tigers.”
After the death of SL1, the only female bearing offspring in the Shushen group was her daughter. To find out whether the group has at least some hope of survival, scientists have to wait until autumn or winter: perhaps the new owner of the Western Sayan has already given birth to kittens that are still too small to follow their mother. But even if there are kittens, the snow leopard population in Russia is so small and fragile that it could disappear in just a couple of years.

Many rare animals on the planet, as everyone knows, are included in one list - this is the Red Book. The snow leopard is one of the endangered species, and today “Me and the World” will tell you about this beautiful, wild animal.

From the article you will learn: what does it look like, what does it eat, where does it live and how long does it live?

What kind of snow cat is he?

The snow leopard is also called by another name - snow leopard, or a beautiful, purring cat. Imagine, this predator doesn’t know how to growl at all!

By appearance it resembles a leopard, but with spots on smoky gray rather than yellow fur and is slightly smaller in size. An adult cat, growing up, gains from 25 to 50 kg of weight, and if you measure the length, then 2-2.30 m. Moreover, the tail alone accounts for almost 1 m and helps balance when jumping.

The eye color is truly cat-like: yellow-green, but with a round pupil. And in the mouth there are sharp and strong teeth - 30 pieces. flexible, muscular body allows you to run quickly, and paws with wide feet - to quietly sneak up on prey. And, of course, vision and sense of smell are perfectly developed. Among all cats, snow leopards grow the longest fur by winter: up to 6 cm, which allows them to perfectly survive the harsh cold of the highlands. Look how beautiful the leopard looks in the photo.

Places of residence

The homeland of snow cats is the high and sometimes inaccessible mountains of central Russia, Mongolia, Tatarstan, Kazakhstan and other Eastern countries. Their habitats are vast: hundreds of kilometers up to an altitude of 5000 m and down to coniferous forests. Snow leopards regularly walk around their territory, alone, and only allow 2-3 females into their “home”.

“Leaders” live up to 13 years, and in captivity their life expectancy increases to 20 years. There was a recorded case where a female lived in the zoo for 28 years.

Production

Snow leopards are nocturnal animals, they hunt only at dusk, and during the day they sleep in their den, sometimes they come out to bask in the sun. Interesting fact: having killed prey and having had enough, it never hides the remains and does not return to this place. Everything goes to vultures or other scavengers, and this is quite a lot, because at one time the snow leopard eats only about 3 kg of meat. When chasing prey, they can reach speeds of up to 65 km/h, but over short distances. They hunt roe deer, deer, and wild boars three times their size. They do not disdain rodents, hares and birds.

In summer, green grass is chewed in addition to meat food. And if there is a hungry year, they come to people’s homes and attack livestock.

A person is never attacked. There were a couple of cases when a rabid snow leopard inflicted severe injuries on two hunters and an old hungry animal attacked a peacefully walking person.

kids

Snow leopard cubs are born once every two years in mid-spring - early summer, small and blind, 2-3, but sometimes 5 kittens are born at once. Babies begin to open their eyes within a week. The mother feeds them until six months, although from two months she begins to feed them with meat. Young kittens learn everything they need for life from their mother; fathers never try to raise their babies.

Poaching

Why is it listed in the Red Book? Illegal hunting of leopards leads to the extinction of the species, although recently measures against poachers have been tightened and the animal population is slowly but increasing. They are shot for their beautiful skin, which can fetch up to $60,000 on the black market.

Therefore, in many countries of the world, snow leopards are listed in the Red Book. How many of them are left on earth? At last count, about 7,500 individuals. There are only 200 snow cats in Russia. Of course, you can preserve unique animals in zoos, but is this life for freedom-loving, wild animals?

The problem of the disappearance of rare animals is relevant in the world to this day. Such a terrible threat loomed over another of the leopards - Caucasian. Until the middle of the 20th century, they shot him like wolves, and even received a bonus. And as a result, they stopped talking and writing about him, it was believed that he had completely disappeared. But gradually reports of encounters with the animal began to arrive. There is hope for replenishment of the species.

We showed you a photo and description of a rare snow leopard or snow leopard. We must hope and do everything so that the animal population grows more and more every year. And for this, since 2010, a program to increase the species has been launched under the leadership of Vladimir Putin.

See also video: