Snow leopard
The snow leopard is a species of large cat in the genus Panthera of the family Felidae. It is native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia, ranging from eastern Afghanistan, the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau to southern Siberia, Mongolia and western China. It inhabits alpine and subalpine zones at elevations of, but also lives at lower elevations in the northern part of its range. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because the global population is estimated to number fewer than 10,000 mature individuals and is expected to decline about 10% by 2040. It is mainly threatened by poaching and habitat destruction due to infrastructural development projects.
The snow leopard is legally protected in most range countries. It is widely depicted in the culture of Kyrgyzstan.
The snow leopard was long classified in the monotypic genus Uncia. Since phylogenetic studies revealed the relationships among Panthera species, it has been considered a member of that genus. Two subspecies were described based on morphological differences, but genetic differences between the two have not been confirmed. It is therefore regarded as a monotypic species.
Naming and etymology
The Old French word once, which was intended to be used for the Eurasian lynx, is where the Latin name uncia and the English word ounce both originate. Once is believed to have originated from a previous form of the word lynx through a process known as false splitting. The word once was originally considered to be pronounced as l'once, where l' stands for the elided form of the word la in French. Once was then understood to be the name of the animal.The word panther derives from the classical Latin panthēra, itself from the ancient Greek πάνθηρ pánthēr, which was used for spotted cats.
Taxonomy
Felis uncia was the scientific name used by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in 1777 who described a snow leopard based on an earlier description by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, assuming that the cat occurred along the Barbary Coast, in Persia, East India and China. The genus name Uncia was proposed by John Edward Gray in 1854 for Asian cats with a long and thick tail. Felis irbis, proposed by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg in 1830, was a skin of a female snow leopard collected in the Altai Mountains. He also clarified that several leopard skins were previously misidentified as snow leopard skins. Felis uncioides proposed by Thomas Horsfield in 1855 was a snow leopard skin from Nepal in the collection of the Museum of the East India Company.Uncia uncia was used by Reginald Innes Pocock in 1930 when he reviewed skins and skulls of Panthera species from Asia. He also described morphological differences between snow leopard and leopard skins.
Panthera baikalensis-romanii proposed by a Russian scientist in 2000 was a dark brown snow leopard skin from the Petrovsk-Zabaykalsky District in southern Transbaikal.
The snow leopard was long classified in the monotypic genus Uncia.
They were subordinated to the genus Panthera based on results of phylogenetic studies.
Until spring 2017, there was no evidence available for the recognition of subspecies. Results of a phylogeographic analysis indicate that three subspecies should be recognised:
- P. u. uncia in the range countries of the Pamir Mountains
- P. u. irbis in Mongolia, and
- P. u. uncioides in the Himalayas and Qinghai.
Two possible European extinct paleosubspecies have been named in the 2020s, Panthera uncia pyrenaica from France and Panthera uncia lusitana from Portugal, but the subspecific validity of the former is uncertain.
Evolution
Based on the phylogenetic analysis of the DNA sequence sampled across the living Felidae, the snow leopard forms a sister group with the tiger. The genetic divergence time of this group is estimated at. The snow leopard and the tiger probably diverged between. Panthera originates most likely in northern Central Asia. Panthera blytheae excavated in western Tibet's Ngari Prefecture has been initially described the oldest known Panthera species and exhibits skull characteristics similar to the snow leopard, though its taxonomic placement has been disputed by other researchers who suggest that the species likely belongs to a different genus. The mitochondrial genomes of the snow leopard, the leopard and the lion are more similar to each other than their nuclear genomes, indicating that their ancestors hybridised at some point in their evolution.The earliest known definitive record of the modern snow leopard is dated to the Late Pleistocene based on a specimen discovered from the Niuyan Cave of China. A Middle Pleistocene specimen from the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site which is similar to the modern snow leopard has been referred to as P. aff. uncia. Putative fossils of the snow leopard found in the Pabbi Hills of Pakistan were dated to the Early Pleistocene, but the fossils might instead represent a leopard or belong to the genus Puma.
It has also been suggested that the snow leopard had European paleosubspecies during the Pleistocene epoch. Panthera uncia pyrenaica was described in 2022 based on fossil material found in France that was dated to the early Middle Pleistocene around. Panthera uncia lusitana was described in 2025 based on fossil material discovered from Late Pleistocene strata in Portugal, and the describers of P. u. lusitana assigned P. u. pyrenaica outside the modern snow leopard as P. pyrenaica due to the lack of similar traits, though it might represent a basal related species. In the same year, Prat-Vericat and colleagues proposed that both P. u. pyrenaica and the Portuguese fossils indicate either the migration of snow leopards into Europe due to the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, or the convergent evolution of European leopards to adapt into rocky habitats that caused their resemblance to the modern snow leopard.
Characteristics
The snow leopard's fur is whitish to grey with black spots on the head and neck, with larger rosettes on the back, flanks and bushy tail. Its muzzle is short, its forehead domed, and its nasal cavities are large. The fur is thick with hairs measuring in length, and its underbelly is whitish. They are stocky, short-legged, and slightly smaller than other cats of the genus Panthera, reaching a shoulder height of, and ranging in head to body size from. Its tail is long. Males average, and females ; but large males reaching and small females under have also been recorded.Its canine teeth are long and are more slender than those of the other Panthera species.
The snow leopard shows several adaptations for living in cold, mountainous environments. Its small rounded ears help to minimize heat loss, and its broad paws effectively distribute the body weight for walking on snow. Fur on the undersides of the paws enhances its grip on steep and unstable surfaces, and helps to minimize heat loss. Its long and flexible tail helps the cat to balance in rocky terrain. The tail is very thick due to fat storage, and is covered in a thick layer of fur, which allows the cat to use it like a blanket to protect its face when asleep.
The snow leopard differs from the other Panthera species by a shorter muzzle, an elevated forehead, a vertical chin and a less developed posterior process of the lower jaw. Despite its partly ossified hyoid bone, a snow leopard cannot roar, as its short vocal folds provide little resistance to airflow.
Its nasal openings are large in relation to the length of its skull and width of its palate; thanks to their size the volume of air inhaled with each breath is optimised, and the cold dry air becomes warmer. It is not especially adapted to high-altitude hypoxia.
Distribution and habitat
The snow leopard is distributed from the west of Lake Baikal through southern Siberia, in the Kunlun Mountains, Altai Mountains, Sayan and Tannu-Ola Mountains, in the Tian Shan, through Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to the Hindu Kush in eastern Afghanistan, Karakoram in northern Pakistan, in the Pamir Mountains, the Tibetan Plateau and in the high elevations of the Himalayas in India, Nepal and Bhutan. In Mongolia, it inhabits the Mongolian and Gobi Altai Mountains and the Khangai Mountains. In Tibet, it occurs up to the Altyn-Tagh in the north.In northeastern Afghanistan's isolated Wakhan Corridor, it was recorded by camera traps at 16 locations.
The snow leopard inhabits alpine and subalpine zones at elevations of, but also lives at lower elevations in the northern part of its range.
In summer, it usually lives above the tree line on alpine meadows and in rocky regions at elevations of. In winter, it descends to elevations around. It prefers rocky, broken terrain, and can move in deep snow, but prefers to use existing trails made by other animals.
At the end of 2020, 35 cameras were installed on the outskirts of Almaty in Kazakhstan in hopes to catch footage of snow leopards. In November 2021, it was announced by the Russian World Wildlife Fund that snow leopards were spotted 65 times on these cameras in the Trans-Ili Alatau mountains since the cameras were installed.
Potential snow leopard habitat in the Indian Himalayas is estimated at less than in Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, of which about is considered good habitat, and 14.4% is protected. In the beginning of the 1990s, the Indian snow leopard population was estimated at 200–600 individuals living across about 25 protected areas.
In 2024, the Indian snow leopard population was estimated at 718 individuals, with 124 in Uttarakhand, 51 in Himachal Pradesh, 36 in Arunachal Pradesh, 21 in Sikkim, nine in Jammu and Kashmir. As of 2024, the population in Ladakh is estimated at 380–598 individuals, with a population density ranging from about 0.2 individuals per in Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary to about 2 individuals per in Hemis National Park.