Snow Leopard Attack - The Ghost of the Mountains

hello everyone and welcome back to tooth and claw podcast i am jeff larson we have wes larson our bear biologist who i normally always introduce first but i'm glad you did yourself first i decided to jump you. I feel I'm feeling big. You know, I'm feeling like I'm the top spot right now. I'd agree with that. And then always in third, we have Mike Smith with us. Always. That's where he wants to be the way I like it. Wes, do you want to introduce our guest? I would love to introduce our guest. Our guest today has been a long time coming. We've probably been online friends for like eight or nine years. And I remember when we first became online friends, I was really happy because I was happy to be friends with a snow leopard biologist. And then we've become closer friends since, especially because her and her husband moved to Missoula. So Imogene, who's our guest today, has worked for big cat organizations like Pantera, specialized in snow leopards, done some bobcat work, a lot of other species too. And we're thrilled, Imogene, to finally have you on Tooth and Claw. Yeah, I'm super stoked to be here. Thanks for having me. Of course. So before we get into kind of our main course for the episode, well, first of all, do you guys have anything you need to say? Jeff and Mike, you guys are probably jet lagged. I've no, I mean, you nailed it with the jet lagged. That's how I'm feeling. I've woken up twice today and both times not known that I was in America. Yeah. And I've been here for like three days so that's like get a grip buddy you know that's still kind of happening to me and i've been back for over a week so it's gonna take you it'll take mike like four months to get over his jet lag me and wes had like a little bit of a stressful morning just with all the people trying to book this fallbard trip yeah and you were just asleep through all that so i was kind of jealous of that. Nice easy morning. The people that I recommend people that organize the trip just kind of slept through it too. So that's it. I still don't know if they're awake. Yeah. Well, I hope you guys get some good rest, but not right now because this is a fun episode, an important episode. And before we get to the meat or the main course, we're going to have a little entree. And Jeff did bring up that we have talked about this particular phenomenon on with snow leopards before, but I want to tell a little story that I found while I was doing research for this animal. We have Imogene here to fact check me. Imogene, if I'm ever saying something that you have like an interesting snow leopard thing pop into your head, by all means interrupt me. Lord knows I'm used to being interrupted and just say what you need to say about what I'm saying, especially if I'm saying something wrong. We typically make like a horn noise, just go like, and then we get in there. Yeah, just do whatever noise. You have to do that, Imogen. Okay. All right. On April 21st, snow leopard expert Kamal Thapa woke up in a tiny village in the Fu Valley of north-central Nepal, and outside he heard a lot of commotion. He'd been staying in this village because about a week earlier, a snow leopard had killed a blue sheep on a road nearby, and the people of this village had taken most of the meat from the sheep when they found the kill, which I thought was really interesting. We actually got to sit by a blue sheep kill and watch a snow leopard come in and feed on it, but I didn't realize that sometimes people in these local villages will scavenge this meat as well and take it from snow leopards, which the snow leopard's gonna get some some revenge on these people don't let the name of that sheep fool you either they're not blue they're not that's what i was thinking too yeah i'm pretty upset about that still imaging not seen a lot of a lot of blue sheep right i have seen a lot of blue sheep and i have seen a snow leopard hunt a herd of blue sheep they are blue no i'm just kidding they're not no they have a bluish tint to them but yeah a little bit of gray so this village was usually really quiet and sleepy in the early mornings but on this day it seemed like everyone was out on these dusty roads talking and bustling around so kamal got ready he went outside he had his morning tea and then immediately he saw a middle-aged woman who was crying and really distraught and headed toward what was called okhal goth which was the large covered brick corral where goats from the village would spend the night together and this woman was carrying a large bamboo basket, an empty basket, and Kamal noticed a lot of other people headed in that direction with large bamboo baskets. What colored goats? Uh, I don't know. Yeah, blue. All blue. Bright blue, though. These aren't fakers. Gray than blue or whatever. After he talked to a couple people in the road, he learned that while the village slept, a snow leopard had crept into this corral and killed 45 goats during the night. leaving the corpses of all but one yeah so it killed 45 and it only ate one and imaging there's a term for this right uh feeding frenzy uh what term what what term are you gonna what term are you thinking of that's what i came across too i also found surplus killing as a term and i know wolves will do this sometimes too but i know that's a little misleading because that's not always the case yeah i think it's less it's more of a frenzy based thing based on like being trapped in a corral, I think. That's my opinion. I've seen it called Joey Chestnutting. But it's when it's with dogs. Hot dogs. Mike's around some Skittles. Oh my gosh. I think your term is much better. 40 Skittles isn't that crazy. Or maybe like a killing frenzy might even be a better term because the snow leopard really only fed on one of these goats and It's not like they have the intent to come back. They're not cashing all these animals and thinking like, oh, I'm going to come back and have a winter's worth of food here. They're not planning ahead like that. So I do tend to agree with you that surplus killing feels a little misleading. That is what it was called in this paper. Surplus killing sounds like the politically sensitive term for a serial killer. We don't want to offend the serial killers. This is a surplus unaliver. Yeah. like ted bundy i don't know he didn't kill that many people a surplus i would say but like compared to the leopard how many people is a surplus when it comes to murdering one two a lot of people i think yeah i would say maybe that's the snow leopard's name in the story yeah ted bundy i think he got a leopard name at least 30 oh yeah well see this leopard's got him beat and then he said he did like a hundred yeah i don't they're always exaggerating i wonder how I mean, the leopard says it's killed two. Well, I'll tell you. All right. So after he talked to these people, he learned that the leopard had killed all these goats, but one, 45. Or sorry, had killed and left all of them, but one. It only fed on one. So him and his colleagues started following these people toward this corral. But one of the village elders actually stopped him and yelled at him, seemingly blaming him for the presence of this snow leopard in the first place. Oh, wow. So he actually went back to the village, and along the way he ran into the owner of this corral and most of the goats. This guy was visibly shaken, but he assured them that he would take photos of all this carnage and then document everything for these men. A big part of the reasoning behind that is just that they needed proof that this was a depredation event so they could get some compensation for these kills, which I'll let Imogene talk about here in a bit because I know you have some insight into that. A bit later that afternoon, someone finds Kamal in the village and tells him that the snow leopard was actually still trapped inside of this corral, and that the villagers now wanted him to take photos so that they could get that compensation for the losses, and they also wanted him to figure out a way to translocate this leopard, so to move it to a new area. He didn't have a way to move a fully awake snow leopard, so his plan was just to open the door and release it, but he was worried that someone from this village might follow it and kill it in retaliation for the death of so many goats. So they go back to the village, they have a big meeting, they talk about it until 11pm, when they finally all decide, we'll just let it out and no one's going to harm this leopard. But when they get down there, the leopard was gone. they found a gap in the structure where it had squeezed out and left footprints in the fresh snow so they follow these footprints and kamal you know as a snow leopard expert is certain that this leopard has just hightailed it into the mountains but then they hear a goat bleeding from another corral 20 meters away they run to this corral peer in and the leopard's inside killing all of those goats. It had just left 44 goats untouched and now it's killing more. You know, this leopard loves the squeeze, not the juice. It's like how Ted Bundy was arrested in Colorado, but then he escaped prison and kept killing people in Florida. I'm with you, Jeff. This is a Ted Bundy of snow leopards, without a doubt. Imogene's with you and she's a snow leopard expert. That is a good poll on that one. It's all factually correct at this point. It all tracks. All right, so now the villagers are enraged. How many did it get in this new one? It killed eight and injured a further ten. Wow. I would just act like it got me and lay down. Maybe that's what some of these injured ones did. Who knows? They say, though, that this particular leopard is habituated to killing livestock and that it could start attacking people too. They try to pull some of these live goats out of the corral. They get a big plastic drum that they decide they'll catch the leopard in and translocate it. And Kamal knows this is a bad plan. So he basically argues with the villagers all night again. And finally, they just say, we're going home. You can deal with it. And at this point, he knows that he can just release this cat, but he wants the blessing of this village because ultimately these are the most important players in snow leopard conservation, which I'm sure Imogene is going to talk about a little bit. But basically he just tells them if they're not willing to let this leopard live, he's going to leave the village. He's not going to help them anymore. They're not going to get this money anymore. And they agree and they say, okay, okay, okay, we'll figure it out. We'll let it go. And they all let it go and they get a really nice show of a snow leopard running away, and it's a good story. Okay, so as a bear biologist, this seems a little crazy to me. If a bear broke into a man-made structure, killed dozens of animals, spent the entire day in that structure, and then escaped and immediately went into another one, it'd be a very clear case of a bear that needs to be removed from this population. And there's a lot reasons that would seem clear cut to me. But the main reason would be that it's like a big risk to human safety. But that's not really the case with snow leopards. So Imogene, you want to cut in and give us a little feedback on this first story? I think so. Yeah. So crazy story going from one corral to the second. But unfortunately, what we're looking at is always going to be a case of where did human wildlife interaction go wrong? Well, not wrong. You can say wrong. So in the case of like, you know, feeding wildlife, obviously clear cut, like don't do that. Not a great idea. But in the case of snow leopards, when we see these incidents happen so often, it's mostly because of like inequities or inefficiencies around corrals and paddocks that are keeping livestock or wildlife that are used by humans. So like across all of Central Asia, there are a lot of nomadic herding communities that live alongside their livestock and they move with them. And they often have like temporary paddocks or seasonal like pastures that they will put animals in. And unfortunately, so many of these, they don't have roofs. They don't have like chain link fences over top of them. You know, the sheep or the livestock can't get out because it's like a six foot tall rock wall. But that's, you know, that's nothing. That's peanuts to a snow leopard. So these cats are easily able to jump in. But then sometimes they can't get out. Or maybe there is a roof, but it's got holes all over it. And so the cats get in there and it's just like a fox in the hen house, right? It's the same exact scenario. They get in there and they're obviously in there because they want food, but then they get in there and everything freaks out because there's a lot of things. There's a lot of killing happening in a really, really small space. And so that leads to that feeding frenzy or that killing frenzy. And so it's a problem that we see in a lot of different parts in Central Asia. And so like if it were in another part of the world, yeah, I would agree with Wes. Like this is obviously a problem animal that needs to be removed. But two things I think are really important. One, snow leopards are not a direct threat to people in the same way that like common leopards are or tigers are in certain parts of the range in terms of coming into like villages. But also, realistically, there's a lot of cultural and socioeconomic associations with snow leopards as well as faith in different parts of their range. And so it leads to folks not being as willing to harm them. However, because we're talking about people that live alongside wildlife, it really shifts our perspectives and our priorities in this part of the world, meaning that like, yeah, a problem bearer would get removed. But it's a it's a snow leopard. It's a it's an apex carnivore. It's, you know, nationally important. It's culturally important. It's spiritually important. And if there's a way to to minimize the effects, the negative effects on both the animal and the person, that's what we want to see. And we do often see it. So in like in this example, having programs that reimburse herders for livestock loss is something that incentivizes locals to not engage in retaliatory killing, which is a term that we use to explain like a snow leopard kills your livestock. You don't want that to happen again. So you kill the snow leopard. So how do we minimize that without leaving these people high and dry without their resources? And we'll have a conservation segment at the end where we can dive into that a little bit deeper, because I think those programs are so important, especially for an animal that's as rare and as threatened as a snow leopard. But the thing, you know, the thing that you just brought up a second ago that is held true for most of our history with snow leopards is that they aren't a threat to people. And I think that is like a big part of the reason that you can act very differently with this animal than you could with a common leopard or a tiger or a grizzly bear but something we know about them really changed this week and that's the meat of this meal that we're about to have real quick before i want to push back a little bit emojine uh just it seems like you're really letting this snow leopard off the hook to me and like if you're that snow leopard you don't need to kill 50 goats and only eat one i have an issue that's fair i mean i guess that makes me a ted bundy apologist yeah you're an enabler yeah when the ted bundy stuff happened you would just kind of be like well i mean he got kind of excited i i think that's not the sound bite that i want to be associated with me but you know it's already out there so i think it's great to have like programs where we teach people how to like you know have better structures and enclose their wild or their animals better but I also think we need to be teaching snow leopards only one or two goats if they break that's true you know I think that you should lead the charge on that curriculum Jeff just carrying a whiteboard out in the Himalayas trying to talk to snow leopards when I was working in the field I worked on a lot of different crews and I know one of the biggest pain points for people working in the office was fueling and gas. 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And like the first time it's ever happened in really in recorded history. And we'll get into that a little bit too. I want to tell the story and I think it's very interesting. And Imogene, again, if I say anything wrong, please jump in. Okay. So there aren't a ton of details from this particular story. I did read a ton of articles and it was kind of what you typically see with something like this, where all of the articles are kind of regurgitating the same information. So I think I have most of everything that's out there, unless something just came out in the last, you know, nine or 10 hours. But basically, the setup for this is this happened in Xinjiang, which is in the Uyghur autonomous region of China. So for reference, this is in northern China, not far from the border with Mongolia, Russia, and Kazakhstan. So this is kind of where all four of those countries come together. And prior to this encounter... Can you do that cool thing where you put a foot and a hand in each of the four countries? There's got to be one spot where you can do that. I think. You have to. Yeah. Well, maybe not. I don't know if they all share a perfect little corner border like that, but unless you're really tall. Three of them might. I think Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and a part of China. Okay. Probably. There's also that Ben Affleck movie where you can create a crime in one and then go into the other one. Triple Frontier. You guys ever see that? I like that. Zero of those countries are places I would want to commit a crime. Oh, yeah. That's fair. What country would you want to commit a crime in? In what crime? America. Like white collar? Tell us the crime. That movie could have used a snow leopard. Yeah. It could have. Wrong country. Wrong continent. Yeah. Right. So prior to this encounter, people had been reporting snow leopard activity in this area. But on the afternoon of January 23rd of this year, a woman had finished up her day skiing in the resort near Kotoke town. And she was driving back to her hotel. And as she was doing this, something caught her eye. A group of people were near the side of the road, pointing excitedly at an animal in the snow. And she pulled her car over and enthusiastically joined them. And you know what? I would have done the same because the animal that they were looking at is often called the ghost of the mountains because it is so hard to find in the wild. It was a snow leopard and it was right off the road right next to town, which is truly a once in a lifetime kind of sighting. But for whatever reason, this particular skier wasn't happy with the distance between her and the snow leopard. And she did something people in Yellowstone and Glacier and other wildlife hotspots around the world do pretty much on a daily basis. which is she decided to get closer than she should to take a better photo on her phone. Reportedly a selfie. No. But I'm not going to say that with any conviction. I will just say there's a fake selfie going out there with her and the snow leopard behind her. It's very much AI. You can see it in the snow leopard if you have an eye for this stuff. But like so many of the news, storied news organizations, reported this as like a real selfie that she took with the snow leopard. and I took two minutes to watch the video because there is a video that we're going to talk about and you can see like a logo on her helmet and then in the selfie there's no logo and the jacket's like slightly different colored and stuff and she's like on a slope and then with it attacking her it's flat yeah and it's like daytime also animals don't look at the camera like if you're that close then they're not they don't know to look in the camera like we do they would be it would have been looking at her so that's something else another clue you should teach these snow leopards to do while you're out there jeff yeah how many fingers did that selfie how many fingers did the leopard have in that selfie was that the giveaway you can't see it see here's the problem with that though so say i i meet someone out in just in real life they people have six fingers sometimes like the guy in princess bride yeah cats let's do that's gonna be confusing for a guy like Well, I have a conspiracy theory with that, too. I think at the start of the AI stuff, they were messing up the hands on purpose so that we would be like, okay, at least we can tell what AI is. And then once they got it in everything, now they're really putting out the good versions. Sure. I will say it drives me crazy that it's getting as good as it is because it's still trash and I still hate it, especially when it comes to wildlife content. But this photo did take I did have to say, like, OK, I need to make sure you have a look. Yeah. Like at a glance, I could see why anyone would fall for that. But I hate it. You remember our category we haven't done in forever. like which one best instagram shot of the of the story like i think this story is an all-time contender like she probably got the best shot she probably has a great selfie on her phone like if she was taking a video while it came after her oh that's that'd be pretty good content you couldn't pay to get that out of me yes um everyone has a price like that's probably true yeah tough times it'd take like two boxes of milk duds for anything to be gotten out of me i'm a watermelon mike and ike's uh for whatever reason she decides to approach the snow leopard it's impossible to say why this particular animal did something that others haven done in thousands of interactions with humans but as she got closer it decided to attack most likely defensively in my opinion It bit and clawed at her face and either pulled her to the ground or she fell. And luckily, her helmet seemed to have prevented the cat from getting really good access to her head or the back of the neck. But I am curious. I'm saying to wear a helmet. You should wear a helmet all the time. Yeah, there's no place the helmet wouldn't. Well, maybe like, maybe especially bedtime. Things get pretty raucous sometimes at night. A shark, it feels a little bit like. Or a chimpanzee. Just rip your nuts off. Imogene. I'm curious, with snow weopards, are they typically for like, you know, smaller prey? Because I think we're medium to smaller for their prey, you know, types. Are they front of the throat or back of the neck? Opportunistic. Either one. Okay. depends on where they're coming from yeah yeah so i don't know exactly what her injuries were but this is where the video of the encounter actually starts we see her lying face down on the ground with the snow leopard sitting over her kind of like you would see with the leopard and a fresh kill and this did make me think that if this was actually a defensive thing if she got too close and it attacked her potentially the snow leopard had decided that opportunistically it might feed on her. I don't know. Imogene, what do you think about that? I was, so seeing that video was, that was the only part about this whole situation that was kind of surprising to me, was the fact that the animal was sitting on top of her while she was still conscious. I think that it was a defensive attack. Like you say, I agree with you, Wes. And I think that the animal was ultimately like really confused by the situation. Like it's a high stress situation. It's atypical prey, but it's warm blooded and it's bleeding. And so if I bite you, you know if bit why not dead kind of yeah you know thought process maybe and so i i don't know i think it might be like a young inexperienced animal that's engaged in like natural behavior but still trying to figure it out they actually caught this cat so we'll get to that in a second but i agree but i do wonder if it was kind of like oh i killed this maybe i should eat it you know i'm not sure or is it like you know i don't really ever eat beets but sometimes people will just put a plate of beets in front of me, and if it's just right there, maybe I might eat it. But chances, you never know. Sure. Feeding frenzy. Opportunistic beet eating. Yeah. What about, so Jeffrey Dahmer might have been thinking that same thing. Like, I killed this thing. There's my people in here, maybe. I don't know. I'm glad we worked both of them in. I would have done what the blue sheep and, like, Ibex and stuff do, and just jumped off a cliff. Run down a cliff. Oh, man. We're going to get to that. Imogene, I know there's stuff you want to say about that. We're going to get to it. I'm all of a sudden realizing my dream guest, besides Imogene, is Jeffrey Dahmer, right? Sure. That's going to be a hard one. That's like 1A, 1B. He's killed in prison. I thought he was dead. Okay. Was he? Yeah. Yeah, he was killed. Just a seance. this attack caused a lot of commotion from onlookers and a brave group of bystanders including a ski instructor rushed the cat scared at a short distance away and helped this woman to her feet and this is where the second clip of the video starts we see a group of people helping this woman over some snow and toward medical attention she has a surprising amount of blood dripping down the front of her but her face is obscured she's taken to the hospital and why do you think it's surprising like it was kind of sitting on her and eating her i don't know if it was eating her but it to me felt like it did a lot of damage from the amount of blood that was coming down and it's not what i would have expected or like a quick defensive attack what do you think imogene i think it maybe um i think it's like well it depends on what you do when an animal comes at you i mean like it seems like from the photos they were blurred like it's a little unsure was she bitten from behind like when she was taking a selfie or was she bitten from the front i mean i think she had some facial wounds so probably um i mean but there's a lot of i mean you think about getting like a hit in the head with something you can have a really superficial wound that just like you bleed like a stuck pig so yeah i think it could could go either way but assuming i mean she just like laid down in the snow you know i know it's not moving much yeah that's what that's what my thought process was was like if this was defensive and she immediately kind of fell to me to have that much blood means that the leopard like continued mauling her and just knowing about their behavior and how they don't really do this i would have thought this would have been more of like one claw swipe or you know one quick little thing and then the leopard runs off so for me that's why i say surprising but i totally agree with you like especially head wounds can bleed like crazy um so maybe i i retract well no i do still agree with you though like it's i think it's definitely like a situation where i don't know if they like bitter twice scratched her a couple of times obviously these are like really you know bleed heavy areas i don't know what the technique you know these areas bleed a lot but then the fact that it just sat on top of her i think that's what indicates like a little bit of like confusion or it's like just you haven't done a lot of murdering of humans and so you're just not exactly sure how to handle this scenario when it's presented not to make light of it uh no it's like that guy that almost got away the guy that almost got away from jeffrey donner yeah that's kind of what we're talking about jeffrey donner should have sat on him we should we just do it domer no i think i'm like i'm not trying to make it seem like oh that's wrong but like i think i just went through a similar thing where yeah you see a lot of blood on someone it is shocking and surprising but then it's like i did just see a snow leopard sitting on top of her also so like yeah adds up totally you know yeah basically going back to this this girl's injuries we haven't gotten any photos of them yet hopefully they get released when they do i think someone needs to write a paper on this so imaging let's i mean let's write a paper on this we should write a paper i'd be down for that okay but at the end of the video the other thing that i think is really interesting is you can see this snow leopard walking pretty casually and pretty slowly through this deep snow and retreating back and it's not really moving with any kind of particular haste. It does make me think that this probably is a pretty habituated snow leopard, likely the one they were already seeing around town and to add a little fuel to that argument, a few days after this incident some ranchers in the area lost 35 sheep to a snow leopard. Wildlife officials set a trap in this sheep pen and they caught the cat not long after, and they determined it to be the same one that bit this girl. I'm guessing probably through genetic testing, but I'm not sure. It could have been some other things they looked at. But they also determined that it was a sub-adult male, so that fits your theory, Imogene, and that wasn't maybe a very proficient snow leopard yet, still learning how to hunt, and probably struggling how to, you know, hunting in this very deep snow that the region had received this year. and they're actually holding this cat until the weather warms back up and it's going to be released back into the wild. So that's great. I'm glad they're releasing it because I think if you approach a snow leopard this closely, it's not its fault if it decides to maul you. You can't blame a snow leopard for being a snow leopard. Yeah, but this one's acting outside of normal behavior, which is always interesting. And do you guys have any thoughts about it before we let Imogene teach us about snow leopards? I think like it's acting somewhat out of normal behavior right because it's also like most people don't get within like 10 feet of a snow leopard. Yeah that's true and imaging can speak more to that. I will say in my research I read about biologists that like freed them from traps by grabbing their tails and even when they like let the snow leopard go it just kind of felled and ran off. and like a guy that caught one from a horse by the tail in and then like killed it a hunter with like a whip they seem like they just don't really like attacking people and to like to get a little bit more on that if you look at the history there's like everything says well there was potentially an attack in 1940 that involved a rabid snow leopard and two guys in kazakh Kazakhstan. I'm saying that wrong. Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan. Sorry. Kazakhstan. But it's like in this Soviet Union manual about wildlife. And that's the only source for it. And there's no, I found the manual. I read the source. That's the only information. And then there's one other one about like a really old injured snow leopard that like tried to swat someone. And that's it. Like that's all you can find. Unless I'm missing anything in the gene. Not in, not like published. I mean, I've heard a couple anecdotes that we can talk about, but they're very few and far in between. So, yeah, that's pretty much it. Okay. I do wonder, though, like it is most of the places where people and snow leopards live side by side. I feel like maybe the people aren't really documenting everything scientifically out to the world. You know, like if someone did get bit out there, there's like a good chance that it wouldn't become something that's like, OK, here's a scientific paper of a snow leopard attack. That's 100 percent relevant. There are a lot of things that are happening that the Western world is not finding out about, but it doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Yeah, honestly, if you have any anecdotal stuff you want to talk about, this would be a great time. And then we can get in to the biology. Yeah. Yeah, so I think so the anecdotal stuff that I have heard. So I've spent time in the field for my research, both on the Tibetan plateau in China, as well as in southern Kyrgyzstan. And that means I've worked with a lot of like local communities and herders and in China in particular. So we spent a lot of time in a place called the Valley of the Cats. And the local Tibetan communities have I don't know if they've reopened since COVID. But prior to COVID, they had this entire like ecotourism opportunity that was available for folks who come in and you stay with the locals. And you're able to come see the wildlife and you're almost guaranteed to see a cat. Similar to what you guys did in India, I think. And in this case, I was told when I was there in the field that there are a couple tour guides that have in the past kind of maybe pushed their luck in terms of how close they're able to get to an individual cat. And when I say close, I do mean, you know, closer than like probably 20 feet. And what's interesting about this is that snow leopards, like we're talking about, you know, why was the woman able to get so close to the snow leopard? That's because, honestly, in all of the anecdotal evidence I've heard, these snow leopards are just very unbothered by people. And we can get into why in a little bit, but it seems like they're just not like they're not incentivized to run away like wolves are. Like everywhere in the world, a wolf sees a human, bam, they're gone. It's not really the case in certain parts of snow leopard range due to their protection. And we'll get into that in a second. But some of the anecdotal stuff has to do with people, people always initiating that contact, trying to get a little bit too close. And then the cats will usually freeze a little bit and then they end up feeling a little bit cornered. And so there's like some hissing and maybe some striking going out. But I've only heard of like two anecdotal incidences from that. But again, it's always initiated by a person pushing their luck. Well, the one we saw watched me poop behind like 30 rocks, and it was unbothered by that. So I guess they are just pretty unbothered by people. They are. I watched a snow leopard throw up in China, and I have footage of it. That's great. I mean, I wonder if the snow leopard has footage of you, Wes. It might. It definitely had a great view of me having a pretty serious diarrhea problem on one of the best days of my life. You know, up and down. Yeah. My cat Toad is an indoor cat. We don't want him outside killing our native birds or wildlife. We also don't want our native wildlife killing him. So because he spends all this time indoors, we want to make sure that we make it as wonderful and as happy as it possibly can be. And that's why I want to tell you guys about Smalls. Smalls is fresh, protein-rich meals that support cat health and happiness. 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That's butcherbox.com slash tooth. Don't forget, please, to use our link so that they know that we sent you. Well, if you guys are ready, then we'll move on from this attack story and we'll let Imogene teach us a little bit about Basic 101 with snow leopards. I'm surprised Mike doesn't have any more diarrhea questions. I just don't have enough firsthand experience with it. Yeah, we need to teach you. All right, go ahead, Imogene. Let's hear a little bit about snow leopard biology. Okay, so I think it's always important to start from the top in terms of their evolutionary history. And so one of the craziest things about snow leopards is that their closest living relative is the tiger. So again, so to back up, panthera is the genus of all the big cats. There are five big cats, lions, tigers, common leopards, jaguars, and snow leopards. So they all share an evolutionary history. However, the ancestors that gave rise to the tiger and snow leopard split off from the other three species like about five million years ago. And then that ancestor split off again and gave rise to what we now know as the tiger and the snow leopard. And I think that's bonkers because the tiger is the largest of the big cats, and it's also bright orange. And then the snow leopard is the smallest of the big cats and is white, which is unlike any other cat in the world. And so it's a really, really strange, strange fact. Evolutionary history is very, very cool. Snow leopards live in 12 different countries in Central Asia. So Russia and Mongolia, several of the stands in Central Asia. So Kazakhstan, which we've already mentioned, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan. They also live in the high elevation mountains in India, Nepal, Bhutan, and 60 percent of their range is in China. They are they are keen. They are evolutionarily adapted to high elevation. So what that means is there are like three species in the world that are adapted to living in low oxygen environments. That is the snow leopard. I think it's called a Himalayan rat. And there are communities of Nepali people that also have this genetic adaptation that we don't have. That's so funny. I just think that's fascinating. And so what that means is they literally have a gene that allows their body to persist, be successful through like the ATP biology processes that I don't really remember that well in low oxygen environments, which means that's why they're called like the ghost of the mountain or they literally live on the roof of the world. like their lowest elevation is like 9 000 feet and they go up to about 25 000 feet um so their name is really indicative of of the environments that they live in 25 000 feet isn't that just like just below how high everest is i think everest is almost 30 but that's crazy i have been at almost 16 000 feet um and like you need to take medication i mean i what did you guys take the preventative medication like every day i didn't and i really should have is what i've determined ours also we got to to ladak in india and we were supposed to be like acclimatizing and getting used to the elevation and then they spotted a lynx and it was at like 15 and a half thousand feet and they're just like let's go for it and so we just like rushed up there and we had two people on our trip that ended up getting altitude sickness. So yeah, it was maybe a little bit too much too quick for us, but we did get to see Eurasian lynx, which was cool. I have not seen a Eurasian. I've picked up a lot of Eurasian lynx scat or poop. I'm really good at that. Better than snow leopards, unfortunately, but I haven't actually seen a live one. So what does it mean to be good at? You're like good at spotting it, good at handling it. Yeah, so all of my recent... You're picking it up. So from a biology perspective, like, you can often tell what animal pooped by the way that it looks. And so there's some characteristic signs that distinguish, like, cat poop from a myriad of other species. And so, like, where we were searching for snow leopard scat, like, we're looking for... We're going places where we think the cats are going to leave scent marks. And so, like, that's the top of ridges, along big rocks and boulders and picking up things. But because cats are similar in areas where like Eurasian lynx and snow leopards are, they're often, you know, it's hard to tell just because one is big, you know, bigger than the other doesn't mean it's automatically a snow leopard. Jeff leaves behind some characteristic signs when he poops, too. I mean, I was thinking maybe a biologist picked up yours that you left all over by this. Be hard to pick up. This is a weak, sickly human. Not long for this earth. Wait, I want to go back to something you said earlier, because you are a big cat biologist then. And a lot of times we say that there's seven big cats. So you would tell us that we're wrong. No, not really. So like in terms of the big cats, panthera is those five species that we've already talked about. But a lot of folks agree that mountain lions and cheetah should also be classified as big cats. Now, it depends on the classification. If it's just based on size, I agree. Like mountain lions and cheetahs should definitely be in the club. If it's based on their ability to roar, then I mean, that's one outdated or one train of thought is that if it can roar, that makes it a big cat. And what distinguishes animals, that's four of them. Yeah, the snow leopard doesn't actually is not able to roar. And the distinguishing factor has to do with like the flexibility of the hyoid bone, which is a bone in the throat. and the folds of like skin around that bone they're able to vibrate if the bone itself is a little bit flexible and that allows them to be able to roar and so like snow leopards don't have that ability whereas like the tiger does you know the lion does jaguar and common leopard but the cheetah cannot and neither can the mountain lion and so depends on who you ask but i do i think it's perfectly reasonable to include the mountain lion and the cheetah in that group especially because the snow leopard is smaller than both of them oh okay i thought yeah snow leopards are a little bit smaller than mountain lions well i mean the cheetah's taller in terms of weight they might be a little bit closer to being in the same weight class um yeah obviously height the cheetah would be a little bit taller snow leopards are fluffy fluffy they are very fluffy they have they look bigger than they probably actually are yeah that's true it's like a healthy male could be around like 90 pounds okay you know females i count around 50 yeah why don't you tell us more about like Like if we have to count our hair when we weigh ourselves, I think they should have to, too. Fair enough. Yeah, I've never seen a snow leopard wet, so I don't exactly know what they look like. How much do they deflate a little bit? Certainly their tails would deflate. So if you've ever seen a photo of a snow leopard, you'll notice that they have enormous tails, and the ends of them are also almost like a little bit puffy. Their tail serves two purposes. So similar to a cheetah, if you've ever seen a cheetah hunting, They do something that the snow leopard also does. Like when the cheetah is running across, you know, flatland in the Serengeti, they're obviously much faster than a snow leopard. But one of the reasons that they're able to be so accurate is because they use their tail like a boat rudder. And so their tail literally flips back and forth at really, really fast speeds that allows them to cut corners while maintaining their speed. The snow leopard, their tail serves a similar purpose, but it's more for balance because they're usually careening downhill when they are hunting. But because also they live in really snowy environments, you know, we have seen a couple, maybe everyone, I think everyone has. But if you haven't, look up the photos of snow leopards using their tail as a scarf because their tails are the full length of their bodies. They can like wrap it kind of around them like they'll settle down and they'll they'll wrap their their tails up around their faces. No way. That's incredible. It's very cute. That's the cutest fact I've heard in a long while. It is very cute. And their feet also. So, you know, Canada Lynx is a small cat that has like very snowshoe like feet because they live in snowy environments. The whole body of a snow leopard is adapted to snow. So obviously, I've already talked about the gene. I've talked about the tail, but also their feet are very, very spread out and large. And it allows them to be on top of the snow without sinking. Now, obviously, they are going to sink in deep snow. However, if they're moving across something, whether it's ice or powder, they're able to maintain their traction better than like another species that's not adapted. It's like they literally have built-in snowshoes. That's cool. That's really cool. I think my favorite thing about snow leopards, though, has to do with their physiology. So if you will take your ton, if you're listening, take your ton and rub your ton on the back of your canines, so the sharpest of your teeth, your top teeth. The back of your canine is going to be relatively flat The front of your canine is relatively rounded That is a characteristic that all animals all species all mammals that or I guess I don know about reptiles But in the case of mammals, all mammals share this this common fact because those teeth are designed for shredding meat. And obviously our large carnivores, our cats, those canines are severely elongated because that's how they are biting onto their prey. The snow leopard is a little bit different. The snow leopard's canine tooth is elongated. It's sharp. It serves the same purpose. However, the canine of the snow leopard is round all the way around. It's not flat on the back. And the reason for that is if you think about pressure on something like tugging, if you are an animal and you've bitten into something like you've bitten into your prey, like you've bitten down into a blue sheep and that animal is thrashing around, obviously there's going to be differential pressure on that tooth. However, if you add to it high speed and literally careening down a mountain, you have increased opportunity for having those teeth break off. from an evolutionary standpoint it seems that the snow leopard has evolved that totally round canine because that creates total symmetry of pressure when that tooth is being yanked on from all different angles as they're literally careening down a mountain that's and i think that is just like the most fascinating like example of evolutionary adaptations because no other cat has that and no other cat lives in an environment like that and i just i mean that just kind of it's is very very cool it's amazing what we learned too in india they kill yak pretty regularly from these different like herdsmen which is a big animal and then a video just went viral of one hunting ibex and you know attacking a huge male ibex it looked like almost too big to where you would think it would you know kind of be out of its its prey but uh i was pretty impressed that this snow leopard it almost got it but the ibex it did manage to slip away yeah yeah that was really audacious good and that's the thing about snow leopards i mean i think any carnivore um this is the case like they you know most you know animals are you know carnivores are attacking their prey and they most of them have like a less than 25 success rate so in a lot of cases cats like they're only successful one in ten times when they're hunting and so but every single time they're hunting they have to go like you know like balls out like 100 miles an hour you know everything you know they're risking everything to try to be successful and in the example that you just shared west like there is no way that that animal i feel like there's probably almost no way that a snow leopard gets through its life without having several broken ribs yeah and thank god they don't have clavicles like cat you know because otherwise like i don't think they would ever be able to walk yeah yeah from those anything or do they have any natural predators themselves is there anything that's going after them where they're living or are they kind of at the top of the food chain? They are at the top of the food chain throughout most of their range. There are some places in Far East Russia and also in some parts of India and increasingly with climate change, some more parts in Nepal and China where we see a spatial overlap between common leopards and snow leopards and in some cases with tigers and snow leopards. And that's not great. They tend to avoid each other so it's not really like a problem but for the most part like a common leopard or a tiger is always going to trump a snow leopard i mean and i guess bears too right like i mean brown bears are like absolutely horrifying um cool but absolutely horrifying uh they they kill everything and so you know if a snow leopard and a brown bear were to come into contact yeah that that would be an example of where they're not like top of the food chain or wolves maybe a pack of wolves, but it seems like they are able to get away from most of these animals. Yeah. It's about like a spatial temporal avoidance. Like they might exist in the same space, but I think they, snow leopards tend to like go all the way to the top of the ridge. And actually I have a friend who did his PhD on like, he was looking at spatial partitioning between like wolves and snow leopards that were kind of in the same area. And it seems like, like wolves tend to stay at a slightly lower elevation in snow leopards, just avoiding one another. Yeah. Cool. Well, what else, what else do you got for us? I want to learn more about them. So snow leopards, like I was saying, like they're hunting pretty much all the time, right? Because they're not eating super often. They're not successful super often. Snow leopards, despite being larger bodied animals and being capable of taking larger species like marco or ibex, one of their favorite prey items, especially in the summer are marmots, which is like a groundhog. It's a large bodied rodent that is like all fat. And snow leopards prey on those a lot. sometimes females extensively during the summer months because the fat is just obviously so nutritious and it's particularly important for females when they have cubs in early summer and so you know like most rodents they're kind of like one of the alarm systems of if wildlife is around or for predator is around and so a lot of the times that we were spending in in china we often are like using marmots as a helpful calling tool to see if there might be like a predator around like a snow leopard. That's interesting. Yeah. And the few times that we've seen, and I know we're going to talk about this in a little bit, but the few times that I have seen snow leopards hunting in China, it was always, it was both times it was lactating females. So it's like in summer months, the females have cubs on the ground. The cubs are small enough that they're still in the den, but she's really needing to like maximize that caloric intake. And, and, you know, marmots are like a smaller return in a way compared to something big, like an Ibex, but it's certainly less dangerous. And apparently they're very tasty. Yeah. I've never eaten one, but they love taste. I've never eaten one. Can you go into, then we keep kind of alluding to it and hinting at it, but into their hunting strategy, because I do find that very fascinating. You've already said that they're ambush predators, but just like how they use their terrain to their advantage. Yeah. So one of my favorite things to do, there are some different snow leopard organizations that often post photos and it's like spot the snow leopard. And the thing that's so amazing about snow leopards is that white coat with the grayish, ruddy, brown-colored rosettes blends in 110% perfectly with their environment. And so what's amazing is that. There's been some Reddit posts of snow leopards where it's like, find the snow leopard, and it'll take me like 10 minutes. And then it's directly in the middle, and it's not even like a small snow leopard. It's just like, oh, yeah, obviously there it is once you see it. And it's even with their eyes. Like you'd think that like you zone in only eyes looking right at you, but that's just never the case. And so I definitely think that if I were an animal, I would probably get eaten by one because the times that I have seen them hunting, you don't see them until they just explode. And, you know, in the case of like this ambush hunting methodology, certainly they are using elevation to their advantage. I've seen snow leopards both trying to use high elevation, meaning that they're above the animal they're hunting. And I've also seen them move below the animal they were hunting. Just maximizing that landscape, that elevation in any way that they can. In some parts of, you know, like if you think about like a mountain, the side of a mountain, you know, you've got like grazing blue sheep. There's often not a lot of, like there's not a lot of relief. There aren't trees like Jeff pointed out. There are going to be huge boulders or there might be small boulders or there might be absolutely nothing. in a lot of cases there's going to be nothing because that's where their prey feels safe because if they have like a wide vantage point how can anything sneak up on you and that's where that that that pellage that coat color comes in is so fascinating um and just like any other carnivore but especially cats like i think cats from an evolutionary standpoint are the most interesting of the predators because they're just so adapted to move in the most silent slow way compared to other species, that that enables them to literally just walk across green grass and you don't see them until they have exploded into motion. And they're truly ambushing. I have a thought from what you were saying. And when you guys do your paper, feel free to credit me for this because I think I'm on to something. But it was like a very unique attack on that girl. I think that this selfie might be why it attacked her because they are ambush predators. So maybe having her back to it and not facing it gave them that instinct of, OK, this is an ambush now. Whereas if she was like facing it, it would like realize that it doesn't have that ambush component to it. I think it's perfectly reasonable. I mean, it's already a really weird situation, right? She was already way too close. I think it would have happened no matter what. But if she turned her back, I mean, it's like, yeah, if they can't see you or if you can't see them, they are moving. right and so that's why often so many times like the last thing you see is the animal when they're already attacking you and that is like the true definition of the ambush predator so i think it's definitely very likely i think it's totally reasonable to react violently too to someone just taking an unsolicited photo of you you don't know what they're gonna do with that picture you said that's crazy a photo of yourself for two milk duds i just give me the milk duds and we can talk so you said something earlier that i'm finding really curious so the snow leopard and the tiger are most closely related of these cats you said so did their common ancestor because they have stripes one has stripes one has spots and like the obvious comparison is just clouded leopard or just your bog standard leopard i'm not a cat person yeah common leopard where which one did the common ancestor have? Was it stripes or spots that they started from? And how did they end up developing those spots like the other leopards did while the tigers have stripes? Now, I don't think that we have answered that question. So like in terms of looking at the ancestors of these species, I think the first documented case of a snow leopard ancestor is in a cave in Afghanistan. And they know it's a snow leopard from genetic assessment, but that's really ancient DNA. And so I don't think that we don't have the I don't think the genetic markers are there to determine what did this animal look like, like in terms of its coat coloration or its coat pattern. So I don't think that that answer, at least to my knowledge, answer is not like available to modern science. But in terms of like evolution, when we think about a species proliferating, like some ancient historical ancestor proliferating into different species, it basically happens when a bunch of individuals from that really old species that are no longer living, just migrate into different areas. And so in terms of like the, like thinking about like Pangea, and that facilitated the radiation of a lot of different species, species basically moving to all different parts of a given continent, and then that continent split up. But that's obviously that far predates like this particular example. And so the ancestor of all the big cats originated somewhere in Africa. And those species were able to then migrate to what is now North America, to what is now South America, to parts of Asia. And then obviously those continents fully split up and all of their evolution happens from that more concentrated location. And so my opinion for most of this, and I think this is like just the accepted opinion, is that we're talking about like the evolutionary history of like just these five cats, their adaptations are happening really really fast you call it like evolutionary radiation because these animals were basically picking somewhere on a map going there and then trying to figure out how to be successful there and so the cats that ended up becoming tigers are in lower elevation warm and more humid environments and as a result the animals that stayed alive were the ones that blended in to like the marshlands or in the trees you know like in the thunder bonds and And they turned, you know, despite being orange, they actually blended in with that environment. And then what became the snow leopard just happened to be successful at this really, really high elevation. And then you start to get into things like climate glacial cycles and animals getting trapped there. And did they live or did they die? But it's kind of like, yeah, like polar bears that turned white and learned how to hunt seals were once a brown bear. So it's just, you know, yeah, like Imogene said, yeah, habitat can really affect how they evolve. a hundred things it feels like i know sorry i feel like i was like really really nerding out you've managed to teach mike something which is something i've been trying to do for a long time he won't listen to me imogene he just won't why should i well you know we're getting to where we probably should move on to our categories here pretty soon but are there any other um like really interesting tidbits that you wanted to drop before we do that so i think that some of the coolest things about snow leopards have to do with sort of the snow leopard, but also just the way that people live alongside wildlife. Like I had hinted at earlier, you know, snow leopards are protected in most of their range countries. But I feel like China in particular, obviously, the story kind of maybe violates what I'm about to say. But every, you know, people make their own independent decisions. My experience on the Tibetan plateau is that one of the reasons snow leopards are so tolerant of humans is because humans are so tolerant of these cats. And I think that's just a really great example. Granted, yes, it's about the cat, but I think it's just a really good example of how wildlife can coexist with people in parts of the world if they're allowed to. And so I feel very strongly that like, you know, one of the reasons that we don't see a lot of incidences of snow leopards attacking humans, yes, is because they live in really rugged environments that are difficult for people to get to. But it's also because the places where they do coexist, the people just tend to leave them alone. And it's just a really interesting example of like how an ecosystem can operate with people in it. Yeah, that's cool. I've been digging into mythology a little bit and like didn't find anything that there's a lot of different. I mean, there's so many even within the same valley, you'll have different communities that have different mythology about this animal. But the thing that you're talking about that, you know, this kind of brings it up is that a lot of these cultures are Buddhist cultures, where taking life for no reason is considered sinful, you know, it's considered wrong. And especially an animal like a snow leopard that it already is like, the protector of the mountains, the ghost of the mountains, you know, these noble spirits often that are there to protect these communities, their religion kind of shuns that behavior too. So that I think is part of it as well, that there's this innate respect for wildlife. And that's part of theology and mythology to a lot of these communities, too. Yeah. And it does extend to other species. Snow leopards seem to have like the highest place of tolerance from that spiritual or religious perspective. Wolves, it seems to be a little bit of a gray area. They are persecuted everywhere. And, you know, certainly brown bears can be problematic. But, you know, like bear spray is not legal in Central Asia. So like the herders don't have access to that. And so, you know, fortunately in that in that particular example, they're at the mercy of the animals themselves. That's crazy. Yeah, it's I mean, some of the villages that I worked with, you know, in particularly in China, it was pretty commonplace that once a year, usually in the spring, almost one or two herders in the community would lose their life to a brown bear attack because they're just taking their yak or their, you know, their sheep up into the mountains and, you know, surprise, it's a brown bear. And, you know, there's no, obviously here in the United States, for example, there would be, you know, repercussions for individual animals, but that's not something that we see in that part of the world. Yeah. One really quick, not mythology, but history thing I found really interesting that I found in my research is a few years ago, you guys remember when they found that Siberian princess mummy? It was big news for a minute. They found this mummy from Siberia in the hermafrost and it was a woman and it was dated at like 25 000 years bc so it's like one of the oldest best preserved mummies we've ever found found and she had a tattoo of a snow leopard which is really really cool to me she had like an ibex like surrounded by flowers and then also like on her hands i think a tattoo of a snow leopard which is pretty rad that is pretty badass yeah This episode is brought to you by Remy. 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Well, I have a bunch of questions for you and a few for all of us. So I think we'll move on to our categories if we're ready. Is everyone ready for that? Yeah. Let's do it. All right. First and foremost, your favorite snow leopard from pop culture. And we'll all answer this one. Imogene, you go first. I'm not going to lie. I had to research this a little bit because I feel like I haven't seen snow leopards in tons of like video like movies, with the exception of there's a lot of different cartoons. But I haven't seen them. Like I haven't seen Kung Fu Panda, which has a snow leopard in it. You gotta watch that. Yeah. I did watch Zootopia many years ago when it came out. I think it's a very cute movie. There is a snow leopard in that movie who plays a news anchor. Yeah, an anchor. And her name is Fabian, Fabian, Growly, which I think is very funny. It's a great name. But the only other, sorry, this is a multifaceted answer. The other thing I will say, however, and it was the shock of my life. I was not expecting in the first five minutes of the documentary Tiger King for there to be a snow leopard in the back of someone's van in 105 degree weather in a dog kennel. Yeah. Damn. So I didn't like that, but it led to some really great conversation about not having a snow leopard as a pet. So those are my answers. We need more snow leopards in popular culture. You ripped through a lot of them. You hogged them. Sorry. Not that I thought of any of those. You can't cut any of what I just said because I said it all. Yeah, I really had to think because I was like, there's got to be one. Kung Fu Panda was the one that came to mind right away. And I was like, because that one was so cool. Is it a villain? Yeah, and he's a really good villain. What's his name again? You're probably going to tell him. Tai Long, I think. Tai Long, yeah. He's so good at Kung Fu. And it's Ian McShane that plays him. Great voice. Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Yeah, that's a good one. When they go up into the Afghan, or Iraq mountains. I forget which one. I think it's Afghan, yeah. Afghan mountains. Because they're not in Iraq. Yeah, that makes sense. uh it's sean penn right is the photographer and he like finally meets up with him and he's like you're gonna take the picture and then he's like sometimes i just live in the moment and don't and is just watching it and i thought it i like that movie a lot and i thought that was like a really good moment in it it's great i couldn't remember any so i did some researching too and i came across So this isn't a leopard snow leopard character, but I did come across a little tidbit. Someone on the special effects team of the first Avatar movie, maybe the subsequent ones as well, said that they modeled the the Navi, the blue alien species eyeballs off of snow leopard eyes. And I didn't do any cross referencing to check how accurate that statement was. I just took it on good faith that this guy knew what he was talking about and that this is a true fact. So there you go. That was mine, too. They changed them to yellow because snow leopard eyeballs are much grayer. And honestly, imaging convinced me they have the prettiest eyeballs of any big cat. And I watched a documentary prepping for this episode where one opens its eyes and you can see them like start to glow. It was crazy. It was like it was a dark eyeball and then it like glowed. And it was something I'd never really seen before when the light hit it. It just looks so amazing. so for me I do think they're my now my favorite big cat eyeball but Jeff's got feelings about that yeah oh you saw my face cat eyes light up a lot in general but I wasn't going to say anything because I think your point stands I wasn't trying to be but I was just like I don't know cat eyes seem to light up have you noticed how different cat eyes are very cool but they're not as weird as goat eyes Oh, with the... Goats have square pupils. Yeah. Yeah, goats have weird. Which is a little less ethereal. It's satanic, right? That's why we think we're saying black. Yeah, we're in the opposite direction at that point. Yeah. All right, this snow leopard that we talked about at the beginning left behind a lot of bodies when it was killing these goats. So I'm curious, from movies, your favorite scene of a villain or a hero leaving behind a high body count. Ugh. Impossible to just at least not shout out the greatest action movie ever made, Hard Boiled, especially the warehouse scene when Chow Yun-Fat swings down on a rope and has a man that anyone who hasn't seen it, I urge you strongly. But I'm going to give a little bit of a backup because the one scene that popped in my brain first was actually the hallway fight scene in Oldboy when he's got the hammer. It just leaves behind a whole hallway full of bodies. And that movie, also incredible. Yeah. If you count the ship, the Titanic, there's a lot of bodies in Titanic. The iceberg. Yeah. I think you got to give him the iceberg That true That true That true That the true villain That a great pick The iceberg from Titanic Huge buyout Or the mummy If you dive really deep on the internet you could give it to J Morgan for the Titanic True. Who is the villain? What is the villain? This and other philosophical questions on our screening of Titanic. Jeff, what do you got? Oh, man. I have a solenie of these. uh blue-eyed samurai has a really good one with like the guys with like the claw hands and then one piece where like luffy learns conquerors hockey for the first time it's like he's at fisherman island and he's like they have a hundred thousand people who are going to fight him and at the very before anyone even fights just with his presence he knocks out half of them and It's so sick. Oh, you got to get there, Wes. We'll see. Please. Okay. Yeah. I picked, I actually, I was going to pick the prison scene from the raid too, but the one I ended up on is actually the ending scene of Rogue One where Darth Vader shows up. Yeah. And you just see him go through that hallway. And you know me, I'm like a big Andor Rogue One fan now. And that scene where he's just like throwing dudes and hacking them down and everything and his lightsaber lights up and lights up the hallway. It's just like peak Star Wars for me. So I really that's the one I picked. OK, Imogene, I want you to briefly tell us your favorite snow leopard experience you've ever had. It's a toss up between the same snow leopard that I saw twice in China. Um, we were, uh, so the first time that I saw a snow leopard, it was a, it was in July of 2019. It was a female lactating snow leopard. We were out, um, in a small van with a crew of snow leopard researchers and a bird guy. But on this particular, uh, July morning, it had snowed. Basically we were on this tiny little road. There was a small river separating us from the face of this mountain, like this totally, you know, just steep mountain edge. And it was covered in snow. It was very quiet, beautiful. And we're driving along looking to see if there's any signs of any animals. And all of a sudden the bird guy yelled because he had spotted a snow leopard. And I was able to turn my binoculars and catch the whole thing in frame. The snow leopard, she was engaged in a hunting effort. And she crested over the summit of the mountain. She just appeared. She just exploded from the other side of the mountain. So she's on the top of the triangle. She jumps over it and just comes charging downhill, powder flying. Her tail is just whipping back and forth. I mean, she's just hauling ass down this mountain in this like most slow-mo BBC moment that's like imprinted in my brain forever. And what she was charging towards was a herd of blue sheep, which is one of the main prey items of snow leopards. It was a small herd. There were like maybe 40 animals. And she had gotten down the mountain about 15 feet in, I don't know, like less than two seconds before any of the sheep saw her. And they saw her, and they just scattered. And she just picked one, and she went after it. She charged, and then the blue sheep cut and all of a sudden jumped up, and then the snow leopard disappeared. She did not have anything in her mouth. And then I watched we watched her skulk through the snow from like lower below the sheep. She was above them, charged down, charged through them and then was now below them. And then she skulked up between them and she used her body. She all of a sudden chose to become visible. And she climbed on top of this rock to split the herd. Wow. And what was so fascinating about this is that, you know, this is remote wilderness, but there did happen to be just out of like within like 100 feet of this. there was a cattle fence that was there. And she literally used that fence to her advantage to try to split the herd and then charged again, but this time uphill. She was not successful. She wasn't successful. But then she crawled under the fence and moved over to this boulder and like sat down because she was panting and out of breath. And we were about 100 meters away, like a small river, you know, separating us. Like we weren't, there was no chance we were ever going to get any closer. her but she just turned and looked at us like she knew that we were there i mean it's a flat environment there were just you know a bunch of humans like for a snow leopard too i mean that's close yeah it is and she just stared at us and then just plopped down on a rock and we just watched her for like 30 minutes that's amazing and then a couple two weeks later in this on the exact same slope we were back and we are pretty confident it was the same female because of their territorial behavior and because looking back in the footage like when you see her moving you can see her belly shake a little bit and you can see that like she's lactating like those mammary glands are full and so we're pretty sure it was the same female but there was no snow on the ground it was this beautiful green like clover field with white flowers and like i mentioned earlier the marmots were all out on this grassy area grazing um and we just parked the vehicle because we wanted to see if we could find anything and the marmots started alarm calling and so we got out of the vehicle and just sat there for like a solid hour just waiting and um everyone was ready to pack up and I was the last one sitting there. I decided to park in front of this like scar in the mountain that wasn't green and grassy. And I was watching all these marmots and all of a sudden the exact same thing happened. This female snow leopard just exploded, but she exploded out of nowhere. Like she was on this green grass. The grass is like four inches tall and there's no boulders. There's nothing to hide in. And we were watching for an hour with our binoculars and we have no idea where she came from we have no idea how she got within 40 feet of these marmots but she just exploded down the mountain and threw herself into a marmot hole and again came up empty um and then again turned around and looked at us and then just huffed and walked away it was like both those are the coolest stories of mine i've ever ever experienced in my entire life we watched one flop down on a rock for 13 hours and i'll never hear the end of it so that's amazing we watched it flop down behind a rock for yeah 10 hours most of the time it was out visible but i don't remember it that way i would say majority of time it wasn't visible what's your favorite 50 50 outside of snow leopards what's your favorite animal imaging i hate to be stereotypical but i'm gonna stay in the in the wild cat family i um i'm a big fan of bobcats north the bobcat is one of the coolest critters in the world i love me a misocarnivore sure the little dudes um though we i've done a lot of live trapping with bobcats for research like catch and release like we anesthetize them and it is terrifying the sounds that they can make and the moves they can do when they're in these tiny little box traps they are the toughest most ornery creatures i've ever encountered and i just love them for it when you said hate to be stereotypical i thought it was gonna be like horse or dog i everyone says this you think you can take one in a fight absolutely not without a weapon are you kidding me like if a bobcat got a hold of any part of your like you would never use your hand again it would sever everything useful to movement in your hand. I would never, ever risk that. What's the biggest animal then that you think you could take in a fight? No weapons. Okay, so I've thought a lot about this. I feel like an easy answer would be a large bird. But I feel like that's too easy. So assuming that you're willing to accept some scratches, a bird is... How large a bird are we talking here? I mean, I feel like I could... I mean, I have seen Lamergyres in person. They've got a lot of wings, but that's all they're working with. They have hollow bones. They're light bodied. I feel like I could take them. You just got to grab onto a wing. You got to grab onto a leg. I mean, even a great blue heron, I feel like I could take with the exception of you said no weapons. And I feel like you would have to wear eye protection because all the water birds always go for the eyes. So I'm not willing to risk my eyeballs or my ego by saying that I could fight a bird. You can probably beat it, though, even if you lost your eyeballs. you could still be that bird maybe that okay maybe that's possible i mean i think about like how i exist in the world when i don't have my contacts in and i'm utterly useless and so if i lost an eye i might just like lie down pee myself and and just that's it the bird is gonna peck me to death i just die you know if they keep pecking you know what i mean yeah what about like a galapagos tortoise they're like 500 pounds back with it over yeah if you could if you could lift to just flip it over like a tire or something or maybe just move away yeah or maybe just walk away galapagos tortoise is a great answer i've never thought of that one that's like probably the heaviest animal that any of us yeah it feels like cheating but only because it's really good logic you said biggest animal and that's a big one right he thought of it though so i think jeff gets the medal there yeah that's that wins bobcat would be really hard to fight too because I just spend the entire fight wanting to pinch its cheeks. They've got probably the most pinchable cheeks in the animal kingdom, right? Yeah, if not friend, why friend-shaped? Yeah, exactly. I ask myself that every day. Wait, Wes, what about you? For me? Yeah. I can't beat Jeff's answer, but I think outside of that, the answer I always give is like a white-tailed deer. I think there's a decent chance that it would beat me, but I think that's one that I can go up against and like pull to the ground and hold down and maybe, you know, punch enough to where I can knock it out. Is this a buck or a doe? A doe. I'm not, I don't want to, yeah, but there's a chance that it can beat me still. They got razor sharp hooves. They messed people up, but that would probably be if I had to pick one outside of a Galapagos tortoise. All right. So another question for you, Imogene, your next bucket list animal that you really want to see in the wild? I have to give you two. I feel like every answer, every question you ask me, I'm giving you two answers. I would love to see a blue whale. I think that, you know, I feel like there's no explanation needed, but I also would really love, love to see a fossa, which is a carnivore that's native to Madagascar. I'm a big fan of the mastelids, like the weasel family, and fossas are not in the weasel family. They are not in the vivarid family, and the, you know, weasel makes sense right like we all know probably what a weasel is but vivarids and weasels are all very they call them filiform carnivores mean fila like as in cat they're cat-like carnivores and the fossa the fossa is in this weird gray area they're very goofy looking but very cool looking um yeah and i think it'd be super sick to see one of those great answers is cake and ice cream one dessert or two desserts. Wait, say it again. Is cake and ice cream one dessert or two desserts? Cake and ice cream one dessert or two desserts? Can I say that I would never choose that? And so it means that it's not a dessert. Well, if you had to say one dessert or two. Okay. Yeah, this is a new answer. I guess we should allow her to have that. Wild cake. I would never choose. I would never put cake with ice cream because I don't want cold cake. And so I think that makes one bad dessert. Well, that's why I would never choose ice cream cake where people are like, just say ice cream cake is your favorite dessert. Because I don't want the cake to be cold. I want a warm cake with cold ice cream next to it. I just want warm cake. I think, though, like, if any of us don't like something doesn't mean it's not a dessert. What do you mean? If I don't like it, it's not real. Yeah. You're getting philosophical here. Very unscientific. Yeah. Like, I don't like donuts. Not a dessert. Donuts is just breakfast. You're right. Okay. So like a brownie with ice cream on top of it, that's two things. And so cake with ice cream on it, this is like deep philosophy. It's like a hot dog, a sandwich. Cake with fruit on it, that's two things. That's true. It is two things. It's two different textures. It's two different things. I'm not trying to sway you. I want to hear what your true answer is. I don't know. I feel like I'm swaying in the wind here. I don't feel like I have a good answer. Give us your answer. I'm going to have to come back to this. I'm going to have to think about this and post about it online. Okay. For like the four people that care to follow up on whether or not Imaging thinks it's one or two things. Such a good ploy to get more followers right now. Wait, why is it not a dessert? Because you said it's not. Is that what you said? Oh, yeah, I think that's true because it's not good. I like that answer. We're just going to accept that. It's locked in. All right, another question to think about then. I'm going to make you answer this one. If you had to pick between ice powers or tree powers, which of those two are you picking? Follow-up, are the ice powers limited to, well... To breath? Are they limited to if there is ice? present no you can create ice out of water vapor you can do it at any point oh that's true but does that mean like i can make a tree or i can move a tree like can i bend the tree to my will are they vines oh okay with tree powers like in my estimation you can like create fruit you can shoot like roots and branches at things kind of picture Groot from the guardians of the galaxy movies that's tree powers that's true i was thinking more defensively but you do make a good solid point on survive like if i can make a tree why can't i make a tree that has fruit on it i'm probably going to go with tree powers yeah i think tree powers is the most useful for yourself and others what can't she do really powers jeff what's the big one the kiss yeah i think a cold kiss with ice powers is like pretty cool like you can kiss someone and have ice powers like an x-men that's cool and like you can slide everywhere you go that's true surprise you're frozen if your popsicle's melting in like the dog days of summer you could just keep that thing frozen you wouldn't have to let it drip it down on your fingers that's a big maybe you would improve ice cream cake tree powers answer that's my answer i'm not swaying from that one we got two more and these ones uh first of all i want to talk about conservation this is our conservation corner Do you have a general idea of how many of these cats we have left in the wild? We think they're anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000. Great. That's higher than what it said 10 years ago. So it does seem like they're doing better than they were recently. Is that correct? Yes. I feel like there's a debate. Is it uplisting? So they were listed as endangered up until a red list assessment through the IUCN in 2017. my actually my PhD advisor was on that assessment team where they were trying to determine what the numbers were range wide. And because we have more information, they no longer met that minimum number criteria to be listed as endangered. So they were moved from an endangered status to a vulnerable status. I don't know if that means they were uplisted or downlisted. I always forget. But they're listed as vulnerable because of the number of mature individuals that we think are in all 10 range countries or 12 range countries. And what are their main threats that we're seeing these days with snow leopards? So climate change is a big one. That's a vague one, but it is still a big one because when you live on the roof of the world and you have shrinking, when you live on the roof of the world that is cold and snowy and that habitat is shrinking due to a warming climate, where do you go? Now you can move north. Like if you're a snow leopard that lives in China, you could migrate to Russia. But realistically, the habitat within Russia is also going to be shrinking. And so that's a huge problem. Mining infrastructure in certain parts of the range continues to be an issue because that causes habitat fragmentation. In certain parts of the range, poaching is also an issue. And that is something that is likely to increase because other big cats and other small cats like tigers and clouded leopards and leopards are being poached. Their populations are being obliterated. And so demand for other species is only going to increase. and then realistically some some retaliatory killing but most of the killing is related to poaching yeah from what i was reading it seems like those retaliatory killings used to be much more common than they are now and that's been through a really concerted effort by people like yourself and other snow leopard researchers that have talked to these these these stakeholders these ranchers and herders and everything and really convinced them, A, that the animals are worth more alive and B, that, you know, there's really not that many of them and we need them to be involved in that process. So, yeah. And we touched on that. We already touched on that a little bit, but like some of these different nonprofit organizations have what are called livestock insurance programs where they help the community by creating like a whole insurance process, meaning that if you lose sheep or several of your animals to a snow leopard and you're able to prove that it was a snow leopard, you're able to file a claim and get your basically get your money back for what that animal would have cost. So you can go buy another one. And they do that with a written promise that they are not going to seek out and kill that animal as punishment for what it's done. And then that in combined in combination with like increasing literacy about corrals and how they should be built, make cat proofing them. We have seen a large reduction in these retaliatory killings and increased coexistence that also prioritizes the needs of people who live alongside them. Yeah. Jeff, did you have a question? I was just going to ask if one of the 12 countries, if they were like particularly vulnerable to like, like their numbers are extremely small in any of those 12 countries or if all 12 are like doing pretty well. They do have different issues in different parts of their range. um uzbekistan has the smallest number of snow leopards they think there might only be there like might be maybe a hundred there and there don't seem to be a whole lot of cats in bhutan so from a numbers perspective um that is just a natural a natural variation china has like 60 percent of snow leopard range so in theory 60 of the world's snow leopards are in throughout parts of china um but in terms of like differential threats certainly there's a lot of mining infrastructure. Some, I think I'm going to be careful so I don't get in trouble here, but I think the Chinese government is leading a lot of the like minerals mining in parts of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. So that creates a problem for people. And I think in the future, certainly issues with water might be a problem because Snow Leopard Range covers so much water that the water sorry the the free water in central asia that overlaps a snow leopard habitat feeds about a billion of the world's people that's crazy and so it's really you know their habitat is incredibly important so like snow leopards and people are inextricably linked in a myriad of different ways cool well our last our last category uh this is a new animal for us that we've dedicated an episode to. So we always give a claw rating for those animals. So on a scale of zero to 10 claws, you're going to rank how much you like snow leopards. And I'll go ahead and go first. They're a 10 claw animal for me. Up until last year when we saw them, they were my number one bucket list animal I wanted to see. And boy, did the one we see capture my heart in a very intense way it just uh i don't think i've ever been so transfixed so quickly by an animal and i just absolutely think they're gorgeous wonderful cats so they're 10 for me we can keep being friends yeah i'm gonna have to give it a nine just okay on the fact that yeah shoot we're just becoming friends too so i count seven big cats and i think they're the hardest animals to rank and I just don't think I want to give all cats a 10 out of 10 for all seven cats I mean is like a little bit like I don't know so that's why I'm giving it a nine and only that reason I think they deserve a 10 I'm giving them a nine because they're like top there there's four other big cats I like more than that okay I think that's fair that's fair they're all great cats yeah they're they're nine claw animal for me just because i try to limit myself to only having 10 10 claw animals like my top 10 are the only ones that are going to have 10 claws i don't want i'm like very precious with it for a category that doesn't mean anything to anybody i'm being weirdly strict about it but they're incredible i love i love all cats my favorite animal is a tiger uh and knowing that they're so closely related just makes me think even higher of them hi that's a weird way i think very highly of this animal i think they're awesome and obviously incredibly beautiful and charismatic and just like like wes was saying pretty transfixing with their eyes and their big fluffy paws and everything so nine claws is where i'm landing with them as well imajene obviously 10 out of 10 um i'm a big you know i'm a i'm always careful when i say how much i love wild cats because i feel like the stereotypes that's why i said i didn't want to be stereotypical right because the stereotypes about like, like the, the cat lady really bothers me. And so like, I don't own things that are like animal, you know, cat print and stuff like that. Um, but I will say from like a ecological perspective, behavioral perspective, evolutionary perspective, and then also just like the, the way that we spiritually or altruistically connect to wild animals. I think that as a suite, the wild cats are just the most interesting. and if you compare them to every other mammalian carnivore, they outpace them in pretty much every single category in terms of just like their skills, their abilities, the way that they exist and move through their life and their habitat. I saw you think about that, Wes, and we can go head to head on this. I know bears are pretty cool. But with that being said, I still think, yes, the snow leopards are probably, honestly, the great love of my life from like a research and passion perspective, And I feel so incredibly grateful that I got to do my PhD on them and have done research and hopefully been able to make some type of meaningful impact for them in the world, even if it's just having more people decide that they like them. Yeah. And giving them nine claws out of ten. Oh, it's close. All right. Well, we really appreciate you joining us, Imogene. If you want to learn more from Imogene, her Instagram is biologistimogene. That's how I found her. and hopefully you'll become friends with her in real life like I did because it is a true pleasure to be friends with you and yeah you got anything else you want to say before we wrap this up no I'm just super excited that we were finally able to do this it's a great podcast I have you know so many friends you guys have a lot of fans in the forest service down in the bitter root as a side note my husband Mark is always apparently his field crew is always listening to you guys and so he's always coming home and telling me stuff and so um i'm just yeah super stoked to be able to be here and um i like the stuff that you guys do so yeah thanks a lot it's been fun shout out thank you for service yeah yeah uh thank you thank you love you everyone love you guys bye see ya bye Thank you.