Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Snow Leopard Attack - The Ghost of the Mountains

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

The guys are joined by big cat biologist Imogene Cancellare to discuss the recent case of a skier's violent encounter with a snow leopard in Xinjiang, China. Watch here: https://youtu.be/-n6PF8HJ3ls ~~ Coast: Right now, Coast Pay is offering our listeners up to $2,000 credit when you get started at ⁠https://coastpay.com/CLAW⁠ Smalls: Get 60% off your first order plus free shipping at ⁠https://Smalls.com/TOOTH⁠ ButcherBox: Get your choice of organic ground beef, chicken breast, or ground turkey in every box for a year, plus $20 off your first box and free shipping when you go to ⁠https://ButcherBox.com/tooth⁠ and use code tooth. Remi: Go to ⁠https://shopremi.com/TOOTH⁠ and use code TOOTH at checkout for 50% off LMNT: Get a free 8-count Sample Pack of LMNT's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at ⁠drinklmnt.com/tooth⁠ ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Register today at richfield, Utah.com. everyone and welcome back to tooth and claw podcast i am jeff larsen we have west larsson our bear biologist but 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 yeah always in third we have mike smith with us always that's where he wants to be just the way i like it west 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 the snow leopard biologist. And then we've

become closer friends since, especially because her and her husband moved to Missoula. So imaging, 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 imaging 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 what 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 it's like get a grip, buddy. That's still kind of happening to me. And I've been back for over a week. So it's going to 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

fall barred trip. Yeah. And you were just asleep through all that. So I was kind of just like that. of that out. Nice easy morning. You just woke up. I recommend it.

People that organize the trip just kind of slept through it too. So that's me. Yes. 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 and 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 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... You like it was. Especially if I'm saying something wrong. Done and done. We typically make like a horn

noise just got like, and then we get in there. Yeah, just do whatever noise. You have to do that, I mean. 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 going to get some revenge on these people. Don't let the name of that sheep fool you either. They're not. blue. That's crazy. I'm pretty upset about that still. Imaging, you're probably seen 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. They have a bluish tint to them. But yeah, take it. 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 O'Kalgoth, 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 color goats?

I don't know. These, yeah, blue, all blue. Bright blue, though. These aren't fakers. Gray and 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 Imogene, there's a term for this, right? Feeding frenzy? Yeah. What term are you thinking of?

That's what I came across to. 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 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 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. Like Ted Bundy, I don't know, he didn't kill that many people. A surplus, I would say, but compared to the snow leopard.

How many people is a surplus when it comes to murder? One, two. A lot of people, I think. Yeah, I would say it was a surplus. Maybe that's the snow leopard's name in this story. Yeah, Ted Bundy. I think he got a little 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 know. They're always exaggerating. I wonder how many the leopard says it's killed two. Well, I'll tell you. Yeah. 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. thing 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's 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 11 p.m. 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 kill.

all of those goats. Oh, my gosh. It had just left 40. Yeah, seriously. It had just left 44 goats untouched and now it's killing more. You know, the 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 on Florida. I'm with you, Jeff.

This is a Ted Bundy of snow leopard, without a doubt. Imaging's with you and she's a snow leopard expert That is a good poll on that It's all factual correct at this point It all tracks All right so now the villagers are enraged How many they get in this new one? It killed eight and injured a further 10

Wow So they say that this I would just act like it got me and laid down Maybe that's what some of these injured ones did Who knows Yeah They say though that this particular level 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 of 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 imaging 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 inequity 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, 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 leopard. So these cats are easily able to jump in. Yeah. 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 it 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 just a lot of thing 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 um and so it's a 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 west 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 bear would get removed. but it's a snow leopard. 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 it 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 it's threatened as a snow leopard. But the thing, you know, the thing that you've 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, Imogene. 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 with that. That's fair. I mean, I guess that makes me a Ted Bundy

apologist. You're an enabler. When the Ted Bundy stuff happened, you would just kind of be like, well, I mean, he got kind of excited. I think it's great to have. 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 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. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's like low prices in every aisle. When when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump.

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And like the first time it's ever happened, 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 with something like this where all 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 nine or ten 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 in a hand in each of the four countries? Like down in New Mexico? 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. There's also that bad

that Ben Affleck movie where you can like create a crime in one and then go into the other one. Triple Frontier. You guys ever see that. I like, no. Zero of those countries are places I would want to commit a crime. Oh, yeah, that's fair. Yeah.

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 the 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 Kotokai 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. 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 case. 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. That's something else.

It's another clue. You should teach these snow leopards to do while you're out there, Jeff. Yeah, Jeff. How many fingers did that? How many fingers did the leopard have in that selfie? Was that the giveaway? You can't see it. It's feeder in the snow.

See, here's the problem with that. though. So say I meet someone out in just in real life. People have six fingers sometimes, like the guy in Princess Bride. Yeah. Cats. That's going to be confusing for a guy like me. 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 can 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, okay, I need to make sure this is. You had to look. Yeah, like at a glance, I could see why anyone would fall for that. For sure.

But I hate it. You remember our category. we haven't done in forever, like, best Instagram shot of the story. Like, I think this story's 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,

that'd be pretty good content. You couldn't pay to get that out of me. Yes. Everyone has a price. That's probably true. It's tough times. It'd take like two boxes of milk duds for anything to be gotten out of me. Some of those watermelon, Mike and Ikes.

For whatever reason, she decides to approach the snow leopard. It's impossible to say why this particular animal did something that others haven't 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 my neck. But I am curious. Mike's all the same to wear a helmet.

You should wear a helmet. Yeah, there's no place the helmet wouldn't, well, maybe like. There's places. 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.

Imaging. I'm curious, with snow leopards, 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's 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, 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, like, you know, I don't really ever eat beats, but sometimes people will just put a plate of beats in front of me, and if it's just right there, maybe I might eat it. That chances, you never know. Yeah. Feeding frenzy.

Opportunistic beat eating. Yeah. What about, so Jeffrey Dahmer might have been thinking that same thing. Like, I killed this thing. Sure. There's minus people here. If I were this girl, I would have done what the blue sheep and like Ibex and stuff do and just jumped off a cliff. Yeah.

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 one A, one B.

Killed in prison. I thought he was done. Okay. Oh, was he? Shoot. Yeah. All right. Yeah, he was killed.

Do 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. 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 for like a quick defensive attack. What do you think, Kimmaging? I think it depends.

Maybe. I think it's like, 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.

I mean, but there's a lot of, I mean, think about getting like a hit in the head with something. You can have a really superficial wound that's just like you bleed like a stuck pig. So I think it could go either way. But assuming, I mean, is she just like laid down in the snow, you know, I... Snow makes it worse, too. Yeah. 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. So maybe I retract. Well, no, I do still agree with it. you though. I think it's definitely like a situation where I don't know if he 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 technically, 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. No, it's like that really like I almost got away from Jeffrey Dahmer. Yeah. Jeffrey Dahmer should have sat on him Should we just do

Dommer? No, I think 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 if 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 adds up. Totally. Basically, going back to 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 Imogene, I mean, let's write a paper on this together. 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 mall 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 imaging teach us about snow leopards? I think 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 of that. I will say in my research, I read about biologists that like freedom from traps by grabbing their tails. And even when they like let the snow leopard go, it just kind of rolled and ran off. And like a guy that caught one from a horse by the tail in, uh, 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 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 Imogene. 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, okay, here's a scientific paper of a snow leopard attack. That's 100% 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, 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. You 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 leopard's 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 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. Yeah.

And it was unbothered by that. So I guess they are just pretty unbothered by people. They are. I watched just a leopard throw up in China, and I have footage of it. That's great. I don't, I mean, I wonder if this and 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.

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teach us a little bit about Basic 101 with Snow Leopards. I'm surprised Mike doesn't have any more diarrhea questions, but I don't have enough. I guess. I just don't have enough first-hand 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 tap 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 genie. 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 it'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 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% of their range is in China. They are 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 like that we don't have. That's so fast. 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. So their name is really indicative 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. That's crazy. I have been at almost 16,000 feet.

And like you need to take medication. I mean, did you guys take the preventative medication like every day? I didn't and I really should have is what I've determined. Also, we got to Ladakh in India and we were supposed to be like a climatizing. and getting used to the elevation. And then they spotted a lynx, and it was at like 15.5,000 feet, and they were just like, let's go for it.

And so we just like rushed up there. And we had two people in 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 links, 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. 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... 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's 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. lawn big rocks and boulders and picking up things. But because cats are similar in areas where like Eurasian links 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 years that you left all over by the snow leopard. 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.

is it if it's just based on size, I agree. Like, Mountain Lions and Cheetah 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 small. smaller than both of them. Oh, okay. I thought... Snow leopards are a little bit smaller than mountain lions.

Well, I mean, the cheetah's taller, but in terms of weight, they might be a little bit closer to being in the same weight class. Yeah. Obviously, height, the cheetah would be a little bit taller. Snow leopard's are fluffy. They are very fluffy.

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 would be around 50. Yeah. Why don't you tell us more about like morphology and physiology? 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 and 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 like 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 wrap 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 Links 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 they'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 snow shoes. 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't know about reptiles. But in the case of mammals, all mammals share 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're, 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 an 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. 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 just very, very cool. It's amazing. Well, we learn too in India, they kill yak pretty regularly from these different 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 that looked like almost too big to where you would think it would, you know, kind of be out of its prey. But I was pretty impressed that the snow leopard, it almost got it. But the ibex didn't manage to slip away. Yeah. Yeah, that was really audacious. And that's the thing about snow lebrids. I mean, I think any carnivore, 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 10 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. You know, because otherwise, like, I don't think they would ever be able to walk. Yeah. From those injuries. 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. cool but absolutely horrifying. They kill everything.

And so if a snow leopard and a brown bear were to come into contact, yeah, that would be an example of where they're not 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 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 state a slightly lower elevation than snow leopards just avoiding one another yeah cool well what else what else 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 uh despite being larger body 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 a like a groundhog. It's a large bodied rodent that is like all fat. And snow leopard's 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 if a predator is around. And so a lot of the times that we were spending in China, we often are like using marmits as a helpful calling tool to see if there might be like a predator around like a snow leopard. That's interesting. 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, 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 tasty. 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 leopard is that white coat with the grayish, ruddy, brown colored rosettes blends in 110% perfectly with their environment. And so what's amazing is... There's been some like 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 zoning in only eyes looking right at you but that's just never the case and so i i definitely saved 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 leopard's 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 relief. There aren't trees like Jeff pointed out. They're 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 pellage, that coat color comes in is so fascinating. And just like any other carnivore,

but especially cats. 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 the 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 okay 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're 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 to someone just taking an unsolicited photo of you. You don't know what they're going to do with that picture. You said you'd sell a photo of yourself for two milk duds. I 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 to 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 your 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've we have able we have answered that question so like in terms of looking at the ancestors of these species there i think the first um documented case of a snow leopard ancestor is in a cave in afghanistan and they know it's a

a 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. And so I don't think that that answer, at least to my knowledge, an 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 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 of 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, 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, like in the Sunderbonds. And they turned, you know, despite being orange, 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 polar bears that turned white and learned how to hunt seals were once a brown bear. So it's just, you know, yeah, like Imaging said, yeah, habitat can really affect how they evolve. I just learned a hundred things it feels like. I know. I'm sorry. I feel like I was like really, really nerdy now. I should have asked me. No, it's perfect. 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 listen. 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, 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 out 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 leopard's 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. communities too. Yeah. And it does extend to other species. Snow leopard 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 permafrost, and it was a woman, and it was dated at like 25,000 years BC. So it was like one of the oldest best preserved mummies

we've ever 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. Oh, crazy. It's pretty rad. That is pretty badass.

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Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. All right, 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 first and foremost, your first of us. favorite snow leopard from pop culture and we'll all answer this one imogene you go first i'm not gonna 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 Favian, Grauley, 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 a

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, but yeah.

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, but I, Kung Fu Panda was the one that came to mind right away. And I was like, there's, 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 do that one. Tai Long, I think. Tai Long, yeah. He's so good at Kung Fu. And it's named McShane that plays him. Great voice. Secret Life of Walter Middy. Yeah, that's a good thing.

When they go up into the Afghan or Iraq Mountains. I forget which ones. I think it's Afghan. Afghan mountains. Because they're not in Iraq. Yeah, that makes sense. It's Sean Penn, right, is the photographer. and he finally meets up with him and he's like,

you're going to take the picture? And then he's like, sometimes I just live in the moment and don't. And it's just watching it. I like that movie a lot. And I thought that was like a really good moment in it. That'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 navvy, 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? Yeah, what's your favorite?

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 seemed to lie up. Have you, I mean, but have you noticed how they're how different cat, well, I mean, cat eyes are very cool, but they're not as weird as goat eyes. Oh, with the, like, the horizontal. Yeah. Yeah. Goat.

Which is a little less ethereal. Satanic, right? That's why we think we're saying... 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 like a villain or a hero leaving behind a high body count. Impossible to just at least not shout out the greatest action movie ever made, hard-boiled,

especially the warehouse scene. when Chowian 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 my brain first was actually the hallway fight scene in Old Boy when he's got the hammer. Just leaves behind a whole hallway full of bodies

in that movie also incredible. Yeah. If you count the ship, the Titanic, there's a lot of bodies in Titanic. Iceberg. Yeah. I think you've got to give him to the iceberg. Yeah.

That's true. That's true. That's the true villain. That's a great pick, the iceberg from Titanic. Huge body count. Or the mummy. Really deep on the internet, you could give it to JP Morgan for the Titanic. True. Who is the villain? What is a villain? This and other philosophical questions on our screening of Titanic. Jeff, what do you got?

I have a so many of these. 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 conquer's hockey for the first time it's like he's at fisherman island and he's like they have a hundred thousand people who is 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 just like it's so sick oh you got to get there less we'll see please uh okay yeah I picked

I actually I was going to pick the prison scene from the raid two But the one I ended up on is actually The ending scene of Rogue 1 Where Darth Vader shows up And you just see him go through that hallway And you know me I'm like a big and or Rogue 1 fan now And that scene where he's just like throwing dudes And hacking him down and everything

And his lightsaber lights up and lights up the hallway It's just like peeked Star Wars for me. So I really, that's the one I picked. Okay, 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. We were, 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 in a small van with a crew of snow leopard researchers and a bird guy. But on this particular 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 it was she was engaged in a hunting effort and she crested over the mountain the summit of the mountain like she just appeared like she just exploded from the other side of the mountain so she's on the top of the triangle she jumps over 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 as she, you know, she had gotten, she'd 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, she 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 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, um, 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, there was no chance we were ever going to get any closer. 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. It's a great distance 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 two weeks later, in this, on the exact same slope, we were back. And we are pretty confident that 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 memory 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. And we just parked the vehicle because we wanted to see if we could find anything. And the marmots started alarm calling. And, and,

And so we got out of the vehicle and just sat there for like a solid hour, just waiting. And everyone was ready to pack up. And I was the last one sitting there. I had decided to park in front of this like scar in the mountain that wasn't green and grassy. And I was watching all these marmits. 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. 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 my I've 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. That's amazing. We watched it flop down behind a rock for 10 hours. Most of the time it was out visible. I don't remember it that way.

I would say majority of the time it wasn't visible. Or at least 50-50. Outside of snow leopards, what's your favorite animal imaging? I hate to be stereotypical, but I'm going to stay in the wild cat family. I'm a big fan of bobcats. The bobcat is one of the coolest critters in the world. I love me a miso carnivore. Sure.

The little dudes. 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 going to be like horse or dog.

Bobcat threw me off. Everyone says this, but bobcats. Do you think you could take one in a fight? Not without a weapon. Are you kidding me? If a bobcat got a hold of any part of your body, 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 Lamer Gehires in person. They 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 still beat it, though, even if you lost your eyeballs. You could still beat that bird. Maybe.

Okay. 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 just that's it. The bird is going to pack me to death. I just die. You know what I mean?

Yeah. What about like a Galapagos tortoise? Torquoise. They're like 500 pounds. Just flip it over. Yeah. If you could lift it, just flip it over like a tire or something or maybe just move away. Or just like sit on its head.

Yeah. Or maybe just walk away. A Galapagos tortoise is a great answer. I've never thought of that one. That's like probably the heaviest animal that any of us could do. It feels like cheating, but only because it's really good logic. You said biggest animal, and that's a big one. He thought of it, though, so I think Jeff gets the medal there.

Yeah, that wins. Bobcat would be really hard to fight, too, because I'd 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. 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 like there's a decent chance that it had 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. This is a buck or a dough. A dough.

I'm not, I don't want to, yeah. But there's a chance that it can be. me still. They got razor sharp hobs. They mess 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 Mestelids, like the Weasel family and Fossas are not in the Weasel family. They are not in the Viverid family and the Weasel makes sense, right? Like we all know probably what a weasel is. But Viverids and weasels are all very, they call them phila form carnivores. I mean, phila, like as in cat, they're cat-like carnivores. And the fossa is in this weird, gray. area. They're very goofy looking, but very cool looking. 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? 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 take. 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. Okay. Yeah. Like, oh, 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. Well, that's a hot dog a sandwich. That's two things.

That's true. It is two things. It's two different textures. I'm not trying to sway you. I want to hear what you're true. 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 trash. 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. Zero. It's not a dessert. This is such a good ploy to get more followers right now.

Wait, why is it not a dessert? Because you said it's not. No, 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 with three 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 popsicles 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 one.

Maybe you would improve ice cream cake. Tree powers answer. Tree powers. That's my answer. I'm not swaying from that one. We got two more. and these ones, 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, they were uplisted. I feel like there's a debate. Is it uplisting? So they were listed as endangered up and

a red list assessment through the IUCN in 2017. 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 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 stakeholders, these ranchers and herders and everything and really convinced them, A, that the animals are worth more alive and B, that there's really not that many of them and we need them to be involved in that process. 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.

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, uh, different issues in different parts of their range. Um, Uzbekistan has the smallest number of snow leopards. they think there might only be, they're like, might be maybe 100 there. And there don't seem to be a whole lot of cats in Bhutan. So from a numbers perspective, that is just a natural, a natural variation. China has like 60% of snow leopard range.

So in theory, 60% of the world snow leopards are in throughout parts of China. But in terms of like differential threats, certainly there's a lot of mining infrastructure. Some, I think, I don't be careful so I don't get in trouble here. but I think the Chinese government is leading a lot of the 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 free water in Central Asia that overlaps

with snow leopard habitat feeds about a billion of the world's people. That's crazy. And so it's really, you know, their habitat's incredibly important. So like snow leopards and people are inextricably linked in a myriad of different ways. Cool. Which is why the best? Our last category, 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 ten claws, you're going to rank how much you like snow leopards. And I'll go ahead and go first. they're a 10 kly 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, I don't think I've ever been so transfixed so quickly by an animal. And I just absolutely think they're a gorgeous, wonderful cats.

So they're 10 for me. We can keep being friends. Yeah. I'm going to have to give it a 9. Just 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 9, and only that reason. I think they deserve a 10, I'm giving them a 9, because they're like top. 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 a nine-cloth animal for me just because I try to limit myself to only having

10, 10-cloth animals. Like my top 10 are the only ones that are going to have 10 claws. 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 all cats. My favorite animal is a tiger. and knowing that they're so closely related

just makes me think even higher of them. That's a weird way that 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. Is respectable? Obviously 10 out of 10.

I'm a big, you know, 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 the cat lady really bothers me. And so like I don't own things that are like, you know, cat print and stuff like that. But I will say from like a ecological perspective, behavioral perspective, evolutionary perspective. And then also just like the way that we spiritually or altruistically connect to wild animals,

I think that as a sweet, 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 or 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 ahead to head on this. 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 biologist Imaging. 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 route. 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 I'm just yeah super

soaked to be able to be here and 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 love you everyone love you love you guys bye see yeah bye