50 Fun Facts About Snow Leopard

What is the snow leopard's scientific name?

It was long placed in its own genus Uncia, until DNA showed it belonged with the lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars in Panthera.

Which big cat is the snow leopard's closest relative, forming a sister group with it?

The two probably diverged between 3.7 and 2.7 million years ago; despite the name, it is not the leopard.

The old snow leopard name 'ounce' ultimately derives from the Greek word for which animal?

It came through Old French 'l'once'; the Latin species name uncia has the same root.

Who first described the snow leopard scientifically, as Felis uncia, in 1777?

He worked from Buffon's earlier account and wrongly assumed the cat lived along North Africa's Barbary Coast.

Why can the snow leopard not roar, unlike its Panthera cousins?

Its 9 mm vocal folds offer too little resistance to airflow; instead it meows, grunts, moans and can purr as it exhales.

What does a snow leopard use its thick, fur-covered tail for when sleeping?

The tail is 80-105 cm long, thick with stored fat, and also acts as a balance pole on cliffs.

What is unusual about the undersides of a snow leopard's paws?

The fur improves grip on steep, unstable ground and cuts heat loss; broad paws spread its weight on snow.

How long are the hairs of the snow leopard's coat?

The fur is whitish to grey with black head spots and larger rosettes on the back and flanks.

How much does a male snow leopard typically weigh?

Females are 35-40 kg; it is slightly smaller than the other Panthera cats.

Why are the snow leopard's nasal openings unusually large?

Oddly, it is not especially adapted to the low oxygen of high altitude.

At what elevations does the snow leopard mainly live?

In summer it can range up to 6,000 m above the tree line; in winter it drops to 1,200-2,000 m.

How many countries make up the snow leopard's range?

Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The snow leopard's distribution begins west of which great Siberian body of water?

From there it ranges through southern Siberia, the Altai and Tian Shan to the Hindu Kush and Himalayas.

How deep is the snow a snow leopard can move through?

It still prefers to follow trails made by other animals.

What is the snow leopard's favourite wild prey in the Himalayas?

One adult needs 20-30 blue sheep a year and can live two weeks on a single kill.

Which is probably the only ungulate in its habitat a snow leopard cannot kill?

It also eats grass and twigs, and was once photographed carrying a woolly flying squirrel.

How far can a snow leopard chase prey down a mountainside using the momentum of its first leap?

It then drags the kill somewhere safe and eats every edible part.

How many attacks on humans by snow leopards have been reported, and with what outcome?

A rabid animal in 1940 and an old toothless one near Almaty, and a 2026 mauling of a tourist in Koktokay, China, who tried to take a photo with it.

How does a snow leopard usually react when a herder drives it off its prey?

That timidity is one reason it has never killed a person.

How long is a snow leopard's gestation?

Unusually for a big cat it has a marked birth peak: cubs arrive between April and June after late-winter mating.

How many times a day may paired snow leopards mate?

The mating season is so short that males rarely seek a second partner.

How does a female snow leopard line her birthing den?

Cubs are born blind, already furry, weighing 320-567 g, and open their eyes at about a week.

What is the largest litter recorded for a snow leopard?

The usual litter is two or three; cubs part from their mothers at around 20-22 months.

How long do snow leopards normally live in the wild?

In captivity they can reach 25.

A Gobi Desert study found adult males used home ranges of what size?

About 40% of the 170 protected areas in the range are smaller than a single male's territory.

How does the IUCN classify the snow leopard?

Fewer than 10,000 mature animals remain and a 10% decline is expected by 2040.

India's 2024 snow leopard estimate put the national population at how many?

Ladakh alone holds an estimated 380-598, with about two per 100 km2 in Hemis National Park.

Which Xinjiang city is the major centre of the illegal snow leopard skin trade?

An estimated 103 to 236 snow leopards are poached in China every year.

Climate change is expected to shrink snow leopard habitat by roughly how much as the treeline rises?

A rising treeline squeezes the alpine zone the cats depend on.

Where was the 2013 Global Snow Leopard Forum, which united all 12 range countries, held?

The government of Kyrgyzstan hosted it; the Kyrgyz regard the cat as sacred.

Which zoo exhibited the first captive snow leopard, in 1872?

It had been caught in Turkestan; the Bronx Zoo showed North America's first in 1903.

The 'Aq Bars' or White Leopard is a political symbol of the Tatars, Kazakhs and which other people?

A winged Aq Bars appears on Tatarstan's coat of arms and the seal of Samarqand.

A snow leopard appears on the official seal of which Kazakh city?

It was also on the former 10,000 tenge banknote, and a stylised one is the emblem of Bishkek.

The snow leopard is the state animal of Himachal Pradesh and which other Indian territory?

India punishes hunting it with three to seven years in prison.

Peter Matthiessen's 1978 book The Snow Leopard recounts a search for the cat in which region of Nepal?

He travelled with naturalist George Schaller and never actually saw one.

Which naturalist accompanied Matthiessen on the journey described in The Snow Leopard?

The book won the 1979 National Book Award for Contemporary Thought and a second in 1980.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard, released in 2009, was which version number?

It was the seventh major release of Apple's desktop operating system.

The Snow Leopard Trust, the oldest group devoted solely to the cat, is based in which US city?

It was founded in 1981 by Helen Freeman, a volunteer at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo.

The Snow Leopard Trust estimates the wild population at roughly how many?

The IUCN's broader figure is under 10,000 mature individuals.

Who proposed the genus name Uncia in 1854 for Asian cats with long, thick tails?

Pocock used Uncia uncia in 1930; Ehrenberg's 1830 Felis irbis came from an Altai skin.

Snow leopard fossils described in 2022 and 2025 suggest the cat once lived on which continent?

The 'paleosubspecies' P. u. pyrenaica and P. u. lusitana date to the Middle and Late Pleistocene.

The mitochondrial genomes of the snow leopard, leopard and lion are unusually similar, suggesting what?

Their nuclear genomes tell a different story, so ancient interbreeding is the likely explanation.

How many possible snow leopard subspecies did a 2017 phylogeographic analysis suggest?

P. u. uncia in the Pamirs, P. u. irbis in Mongolia and P. u. uncioides in the Himalayas, though the split is disputed.

Between 2003 and 2016 how many snow leopard skins were traded, according to one estimate?

288 of them were confiscated; poachers in Mongolia take 34-53 animals a year.

When are snow leopards mostly active?

They rest near cliffs and ridges that give vantage points and shade.

Snow leopards have been recorded hunting successfully in what grouping, unusual for a solitary cat?

They are otherwise solitary, and home ranges of neighbours overlap though the animals rarely meet.

Snow leopard hunting has been banned in Kyrgyzstan since which decade?

China's ban dates from 1989 and carries at least ten years in prison.

How many snow leopards did American zoos hold by 1986, two years after the Species Survival Plan began?

The first captive-bred cubs had been born at Beijing Zoo in the 1990s according to the same account.

How long is a snow leopard's tail?

That is nearly as long as its 75-150 cm body, and it uses it for balance on rocks.

Which sound can a snow leopard make only while exhaling?

Its other calls are meows, grunts, prusten and moans.