Snow leopard (Uncia uncia)
Snow leopards are one of the most beautiful of the cats, and are also exceptional athletes capable of making huge leaps over ravines. These powerful cats can bring down prey almost three times their own size.
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Snow leopard
Snow leopard hunt
Planet Earth
The first ever footage of an entire snow leopard hunt. Filmed in high definition.
Earth News
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Snow Leopard Diary
A research project is under way to learn more about the elusive snow leopard.
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Answers to your snow leopards questions
Over the past four months, a research project has been underway on the Pakistan-Afghanistan borders to learn more about the elusive snow leopard.
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About the Snow leopard
The snow leopard (Uncia uncia or Panthera uncia), sometimes known as ounce, is a moderately large cat native to the mountain ranges of Central Asia. The classification of this species has been subject to change and its exact taxonomic position will not be resolved until further studies are conducted.
Snow leopards live between 3,000 and 5,500 metres (9,800 and 18,000 ft) above sea level in the rocky mountain ranges of Central Asia. However, their secretive nature means that their exact numbers are not known, although it has been estimated that between 3,500 and 7,000 snow leopards exist in the wild and between 600 and 700 in zoos worldwide.
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The Snow leopard is
Adaptation data provided by Animal Diversity Web
Where can I see them?
This region contains the following habitats:
Species range provided by WWF's Wildfinder
Conservation Status
The Snow leopard is Endangered
- EX - Extinct
- EW
- CR - Threatened
- EN - Threatened
- VU - Threatened
- NT
- LC - Least concern
Elsewhere on the web
- Snow leopard - Panthera uncia (arkive.org)
- Uncia (animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu)
- IUCN Red List information (iucnredlist.org)
- Snow leopard conservation projects (panthera.org)
- Snow Leopard Trust UK: fact sheet (snowleopardtrustuk.org)
- Snow Leopard (wikipedia.org)
Site links
BBC links
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