Megafelinology (SNOW LEOPARDS + OTHER BIG CATS) with Imogene Cancellare

Alley word, this is allergies, this is mega-felineology, it's big cats.

“So you learned way back in our Felineology episode about house cats,”

which we're gonna link in the show notes, that Felineology comes from the Latin Felineist for cats, mega means huge, but in Greek. So this word is a mishmash, but it's big wild kitties and includes tiger's panthers, jaguars, common lepards, cheetahs, we also talk about bobcats and coogers, snow lepards, some of those are the same, and we'll explain how that works, as well as take you to some

remote mountain ranges and sunlit meadows to spy on elusive species that if they could, would probably knock stuff off of huge bookshelves, big cats, big deal. But first, thinking of patrons, you support the show for one hot dollar or more every month, and who submit questions via patreon.com/allegies, you too can ask theologist questions before we record thanks to everyone in allegiesmerch, from allegiesmerch.com, totes, hats, all of those things,

and as always, you can support this show with just a few minutes of your time by leaving

us a good review, and they warm my heart so much, I read all of them, such as this recent one from New Mac 83, who wrote highly recommend, I love listening to Alley nerd out with someone who is passionate about theirology, I even scheduled an appointment to cut bangs. New Mac 83, as we always say, cut the bangs, text the crush, we're all going to die, why wait? Myself, I cut bangs this weekend, no regrets. Also, thank you to sponsors of the show

who make a possible press to donate to a cause of theologist choosing each week. Also, if you're wishing that you could listen to Alley's without any swearing or adult themes, we have smallities in their own podcast feed, just for you, in particular, search SMOLOGIS, smallities wherever you get podcasts, please do subscribe to those tell your friends and your teachers. Okay, so thisologist is a conservation biologist who has worked in numerous countries,

a National Geographic Explorer and a Wildcat Scientist who did their undergrad in Animal Science at North Carolina University, got a Masters in Wildlife Biology at West Texas A&M, and earned a PhD in 2023 from the University of Delaware in Wildlife Ecology, Genomics, and the ecology of snow leopards across high Asia. They're also a renowned wild-life science communicator and have worked as a guide for ethical science tourism trips

in the Amazonian rainforest. Casual, they also have always been a favorite presence of

mine on social media. They share tales and photos of fieldwork, adventures all over the world, and yeah, we're going to hear some fieldwork stories, their duties, and though we've been buds forever, we have been in the same room, never, but we hopped on virtually to chat from their home outside of Missulu, Montana. Imagine if Elfanning grew her hair out and also knew everything about

“snow leopards. That's what we're working with, amazing. So find a patch of sunlight and curl”

into a ball for tales of snow-capped mountains, narrow escapes, camera-trap revelations, DNA discoveries, olfactory obsessions, stories from the brink of extinction, if big cats like big boxes, white tales can be bobbed, lioness mains, big cat attacks, making huge biscuits, and if a cat purrs in the woods would anyone hear it with wildlife biologists, field researcher, labwis, science, communicator, cat parent, and mega-felineologist, Dr. Imogen, Kansalari.

You can hear me okay. Yeah. We're all good. Okay. You're me okay. Yes.

Amazing. Oh my god. Look at us. We're finally doing this. I don't know excited. I know. I wanted to.

I've never hung out with you in person. Have I? Have I? No. Big bummer. I know. We've never met IRL. I'm just an internet fan from afar all these years. Okay. Thank you. We like each other. Okay. Let's get into it. Imogen, Kansalari. She, her. Dr. Kansalari. I was so thrilled when

“your PhD was in the bag. When you were studying this, did you always want to be a cat doctor?”

Did you always want to be a PhD? Were you just in the field with bobcats? And then you're like, I gotta go next steps, no efforts. So I've always been interested in cats. I always say that she does are like my gateway cat. And then from there I just kind of set out to be able to train and get education. So I could ask good questions. And so I could eventually study other species that I was interested in. I have not yet done research active research on Cheetahs, but I'm not

different other species as well. Where did you have access to Cheetah information? For me, the interest in Cheetahs mostly was jumpstarted through like natural history program.

“There was a TV show on like discovery or animal planet. I think it was called big cats. And they”

featured a lot of footage and stories about Cheetahs. And I have always found them fascinating

as a result. Just like the anatomy and physiology of a Cheetah, and all cats in general is just very, very interesting to me, but also just the unique ways that they interact with their ecosystem. And in the case of Cheetahs, like I'm obviously talking about how frickin' bath they are. And you know, combine that with being apex carnivores. I find them very interesting. Do you have cats at home? I do. I actually have two cats that turn 18 this year.

No, since they were tiny, tiny little babies. Yes, I'm a big, long time cat fan. I grow up with cats. You've been all over the world studying big cats. Do you see behavior in big wild cats that's similar to your babies at home? Yes. For that a myth. No, that's true. Oh, you do. Okay. Okay. All cats are the same. Really? In one way or another. My very first job was in North Western

“Montana out of undergrad. I had decided that I did not want to go to vet school. I grew up”

on a farm. I was very interested in animals in nature. And I thought that the only pathway if you're interested in animals was to be a veterinarian. Imagine says she's thankful that she learned otherwise after a study trip to Australia showed her the importance of wildlife conservation. And the thrill of field work and mega-fuelingology as a career. And my last year in college, I worked at a tiger sanctuary called. I want to talk to your rescue. Now, this is a no-touch facility.

This is not like tiger came in any capacity whatsoever. They're accredited. I want to go ahead and shout them out because they do good work and we're not petting cats. Get your hands off. Yes. I worked there for a year. I had a great time learned a lot about all of the different animals that were there. But specifically, after I graduated, I came to Montana to work on a wild bobcat project. I worked with a PhD student with her PhD and she had colored wild bobcats

and she was tracking their movement to understand how they interacted with a snowing environment, what was their prey like in both summer and winter. But we also at some point had to recapture the bobcats to replace some batteries on their collars that had failed. There's a lot of different ways that you can trap an animal, but we use box traps, which is the most humane method. So a box trap is like someone put a burrito in a phone booth or a small room and you were like

hell yeah burrito and then the door locked behind you. And then some sweet aliens were like, hey, can we just study you for like a sec? We're trying to save your species and you're like, what's in it for me? And you either put raw meat inside of it in this case, like beer. But what's really similar about cats is all cats regardless of if they're the ones in our house or they're the ones in the wild. They love shiny things. And when we were trying to attract these wild

bobcats into our traps, you're basically setting a trap out in the middle of the woods and hoping that a bobcat walks by. But when they get closer, how do you actually draw them in? And one of

the things that we always did is we would hang CDs at like bobcat level from fishing line because

they would twirl and and sparkle in the wind and they cannot rid of that. Oh my god. Oh my god! I wonder if house cats like that as well. Just the rainbows and the glimmers. Absolutely. I mean, I thought the tiger's thinks you're wearing, granted this is the captain setting, but all of the cats, if you give them a box, they will climb into it. What? Okay, why is that? Do you have any idea? I'm trying to think like, what is the intelligent ecological behavioral explanation? I think the only

“the only thing that I can come up with is it satisfies their need to hide. It has like an advantage”

from their vantage point. So like if they're in a box, some part of their body is obscured and they are able to stalk better. So I think it really is just kind of a mimic of a natural ambush predator behavior. But obviously, I guess they're not realizing that if it's a box, it's totally

open. Yes, everyone can see them. You're not fooling that you're lying. Well, what about I've always

wondered, litter boxes and sanctuaries? Yes, no. No, to litter boxes and sanctuaries. In the wild, all cats will use feces in urine to set mark and they have their preferences for where they do that. Like, for example, snow leopard's always defecate and urinate along the tops of ridges. And that's mostly because it's kind of like they maximize their calling card. Like, as in the wind is picking up, I'm most of what they're doing. This is how they share their emails. But in

captivity, we don't think that quite as much. Doing it on a ridge is like getting a billboard on sunset boulevard or something. It's just like a highs, you can go 100%. They want people to know

a way that they communicate with one another for territory. But also, like, if they're receptive during breeding season to let someone else know, hey, I live here. And hopefully, usually, the other animal, if they come across that calling card, they respect it. Especially if you're talking about two males. If you're talking about females, you know, sometimes females have overlapping territories. But for the most part, males do not for all species. All carnivores, cats included.

Certainly, the main marker for that is going to be urine and feces kind of on the periphery

of their territory as they're just constantly moving through it to basically guard it, protect it,

et cetera. It's like wonderful graffiti. It's just like smelly smelly graffiti. And okay, when it comes to big cats, I should have asked this up top, mega-felineology. What counts is a big cat,

“because I've seen main coons that you should get a tax deduction for. Bobcats can be tiny,”

where is the line, especially if you're a mega-felineologist? So, there's a couple of different lines of thinking. The first and potentially strongest argument, that a lot of people, previously, you know, adhere to and people support, is does the cat fall in the big cat genus. And so, the big cat genus is panthera. And so, we're talking about taxonomy. You've got, you know, your, your order, your class, your family, your genus and species. And so,

the five big cats that fall into panthera include the lion, tiger, jaguar, common leopard, and

the snow leopard. So, those guys are basically irrefutable. They're in the club. They're the big cats.

However, there are other cats that people argue that should be considered big cats. And I tend to agree with them, specifically the North American mountain lions and the cheetah. Oh, these two cats

“are relatively large. Both of them tend to be taller and weigh a little bit more than the smallest”

of the big cats that I just named, the snow leopard is the smallest. So, the North American mountain lion, also called a puma, a cougar, sometimes a Florida panther, a cat amount, meaning cat of the mountain, a painter, a deer tiger, or a mountain screamer. Not all of those terms are scientific or scientifically accurate. So, the puma native to North and South America is not in the genus panthera, but rather in the genus puma. While learning this,

I googled puma and a sponsored ad for pants popped up, and I was sucked into the vortex of the German sportswear company puma, only to find that puma, as well as other big cats, do not live in Germany. In fact, the company puma was originally called Ruta, which was named first founder, Rutaugh, Dazzler. His brother, Adolf Dazzler, was also a fan of his own name

“and portmentos, and the founder of the company Adidas. Adidas. Adidas. Get it? Adolf Dazzler. Adidas.”

Eventually, Rutaugh, gave up the name thing and just named it puma. I don't know why. The two brothers, though, were bitter rivals. One owned puma, the other Adidas. They hated each other toward the end of their lives. They're buried in the same cemetery as far away as the plots would allow. They were also passionate Nazis. Another puma fact, no one wanted to know, is that after the company was floundering a few decades ago, it called in CEO Robert

Louis Dreyfus, and of the name sounds familiar. That's because his second cousin once removed his Julia, Louis Dreyfus, who was of Jewish descent, which is weird, again, because the founders

were Nazis. Also, Julius Dad was worth $4 billion at the time of his death in 2016. But that's

wacky. I didn't know that. Anyway, puma's can be six to seven feet long, and they can weigh over a hundred pounds. Although the males can weigh in at double at 200 pounds. Now, a snow leopard in the genus panthera weighs 75 to 120 pounds, much smaller than the non panthera, non big cat puma. Also, technically, not a big cat is the beloved cheetah. In a totally different genus, and is capable of running faster than the 55 miles per hour speed limit in most states. Now, cheetahs weigh

in between 50 and 140 pounds. Again, not a panthera or a big cat, but larger than the official big cats, snow leopard. For more on mountain lions, also, you can see our very sad by touching memorial episode for P22, the solitary lion that stalked around L.A.'s mid-city urban park until his death in 2022. I interview drunk people on the street for that. But yes, cheetah and mountain lion. Are they big cats? Some folks argue that those two cats should also be considered big cats,

and I do tend to agree. The other factor is a lot of folks say that it should not be considered a big cat unless it can roar. Oh no, are you serious? Yeah, not all cats can roar, and that's specifically has to do with the structure of a bone in their throat called the hyoid bone. Cats have a flexible hyoid bone. The bone is able to vibrate along the laryngeal folds in the throat,

hyoid bone. Yeah, we did a laryngeology, and I was like, what the fuck floating bone in our neck

is this? I was like, news to me. But so the hyoid bone is what's making the roar? So let's see, tigers don't truly purr. Obviously, they can roar, but they do something called the cachuffing. And we often see it when they interact with humans in a captive environment, but they do still chuff at one another, and it's kind of like this rolling, I don't know what I'm saying. It's been a long time since I had to do it, because you can do it to a tiger, and they'll do it back. It's

like a, oh, type sound. That's a communication, but it's not exactly in the back of the throat. Like, perine is like when we think about our domestic cats perine, it's not like this vibrating ball sound in the back of the throat. This is fully in the front of their palate, like the sound

“that I just made, and humans can obviously mimic it. I know the tigers do that. I think I've heard”

the lions do that. I don't know if jaguars and common leopards also do a type of chuff. It's mostly a truly a tiger trait, but I don't know if they do anything that's kind of similar or analogous to that. Yeah, and so for cats that cannot roar, they have a hardened hyoid bone that allows them to purr, but not produce a roar. And snow leopards cannot technically roar in the way that some of the other big cats can. So you see, like, we have this disagreement from a genetic evolutionary history

standpoint in terms of their genus versus this anatomy and physiology thing versus just their size. And so certainly, I think the most inclusive option is their big size. And so we do often say that there are seven big cats. So it's the five cats in Pantera. But again, that's the lion, the tiger, the jaguars, the common leopard, the snow leopard, but I'm going to go ahead and add in the North American mountain lion as well as the cheetah because they're big cats. Okay, and again,

big cats tend to be able to roar. Up to 114 decibels, which is roughly the volume of a chainsaw, audible from up to five miles away. And that is because they have a more flexible, high-oied bone and voice box, except the snow leopard, which is technically again a big cat, but has a more ossified, high-oied bone, like the puma and the cheetah, non-big cats. But that hard, high-oied bone allows it to vibrate its voice box dozens of times a second, making that

purring noise when it's breathing both in and out. And cats purring, they tend to do this when they're chilling, when they're happy, when they're resting, or sometimes as a stem when they're stressed out. So with all these overlaps in size and high-oied bones, why aren't all seven cats big cats, or at least in the genus Pantera? Well, the original ancestor to all these kitties originated in Africa. And imaging says that these cat ancestors migrated north out of Africa into what is now

central Asia, or parts of what's now Europe. But some migrated onto land that would become

north in South America once Panjia busted up roughly 200 million years ago. So they diverged there.

Now, not big cats are the shorter small cats, and those include links, which weigh up to 60 pounds, the up to 30 pound oscillat and the bobcat, which is between 15 to 40 pounds. So compare that to the South American Jaguar, which can top 200 pounds and eat crocodiles. Unknown is if a Jaguar would eat half the crocodile and leave the rest on your porch as a gift, which would be sick. But yeah, big cats are, they're not inside kitties. And so we get super confusing when we are talking

“about that nomenclature. But I think what is most commonly confused, like in fashion, as well as”

in natural history, is the difference between like the cheetah, a Jaguar, and a common leopard. Okay, specifically because they all have different spots, right? So they're this like

ready, orangey, brown cat that have some varying types of spots. The first thing that is helpful

if you don't know what you're looking at is the cheetah has solid black spots. Okay, the spots are not open. They are not irregularly shaped. They're just nice, good ol' fashion, black polka dots. But the cheetah also has these black stripes, these black peer lines that run from their eyes down to their mouth. And that's unique for cheetahs. And it has to do with reflecting light on these open planes. It helps them to create shadows so they can actually see better.

And that is something that none of the other cats truly have. But certainly Jaguar's

“and leopard's are most often confused for one another. And so the best way to tell the difference”

between a Jaguar and a leopard, one, the Jaguar tends to be a bit like stockier, a little bit. Like it looks like you're taking a couple more steroids than the leopard's. But if you're not looking at them side by side, it's hard to tell. And so the Jaguar has what are called rosettes.

that sometimes has a little bit of a darker centroid inside of it. Whereas the common leopard has mostly black spots that are, yes, solid, like the cheetah, but they're slightly more irregularly shaped. Oh, okay. To recap, cheetah, the common leopard and the Jaguar are all this orangeish sandy brown color. And now the cheetah lives in Africa. It has long legs and solid spots. The common leopard lives in Africa, Central Asia, India and China and has solid black spots.

And the Jaguar lives in Central and South America and has those open rosette looking spots. Now, a black Panther isn't really a thing. What? They're either a common leopard or a Jaguar. But are they not spotted? Oh, country. If you look closely at a black Panther, hopefully from a photograph, you'll see the spots kind of like a fancy fabric that's all the same

“color. But at an angle, it has like a floral pattern. I think it's called a brocade or a jackart.”

In terms of spots, we're not even going to touch on any of the small cats because this is not a micro-fuelinology episode either. But I hope the mega-fuelinology spot information wins you a bet. I hope it humiliates your adversaries. And that's a good way to tell the difference

between all of them. I don't own any animal print clothing because I find it always in correct

and that drives me bumpers. I also already am combating the stereotype of being like a cat lady. If I'm good, I don't, if I'm going to add to it, I'm only going to add to it with like factually correct stuff. And then find a fashion industry just doesn't do a good job. So shout out. They need to hire, they need to hire a cat scientist. I was going to say they need you as a consultant. Because yeah, if I see someone in a cat print, I always just think, oh, it's leopard print, like a leopard print

“mini skirt or something. But it could very well be a mishmash of cheetah and leopard. Well,”

let's talk about leopard versus snow leopard. It's because you are a snow leopard scientist. I understand your PhD involved also collecting a lot of snow leopard poop, perhaps some ridges.

How did you wind up in the arms of snow efforts? Yes, okay. So I first became aware of snow

leopards in 2011. I got my bachelor's degree in 2010. Realize I wanted to be a wildlife biologist. Realize that I really wanted to work on wildcat conservation. So I set out on learning as much as I could about mammalian carnivores in terms of research like different projects, different techniques. I learned about snow leopards in 2011 when I saw an advert online for a graduate research project that was focused on snow leopards into Gikistan, which is a country

in the western part of Central Asia. It's near afghanistan. It's near kirkistan. It's west of China.

“And I was super excited. I learned as much as I possibly could about Gikistan. Obviously,”

about snow leopards. I mean, like I said, cheetahs were like my gateway drug. But then I learned

about snow leopards and I was like, oh my god, this is amazing. But I applied. And I got a phone call

that I had been selected for an interview for this position. And I was freaked out in an unreasonable or, actually, in a very reasonable way. I was very freaked out. I was very excited. I did the interview and went really well, but I did not get the position. Oh, I was super bummed. But the position went to one of imagines good friends and colleagues. An imaging went on to get her master studying Bobcat genetics. All the while still sending occasional emails to the snow

leopard guy being like, oh hey, I'm getting a master's cut banks email your potential boss, nothing will lose. So a few months after completing that master's, she got an email saying, hey, interested in doing a snow leopard PhD, you'd be using your skills in molecular ecology and genetics to investigate snow leopard evolutionary history throughout their range, which is in 12 different countries in Central Asia. She interviewed and then one day

while at an RV park helping a friend with some weasel research imagines phone right. I was my day off. I was standing in the middle of this RV park when I got to phone call that he wanted to offer me this research position for my PhD. And I was just wondering, it was like really silly things. Like, I feel like if I could have been a squirrel or a bird watching me, I would have thought I was insane because I just started screaming and like running up and down this like fallen

tree. And I'm pretty sure all the people of the RV park were like, oh my God, this woman is insane. Oh, so excited. What is this? Well, what is the woman doing? And so that is how I fell into the world of snow leopard. You didn't fall into it though. You're so good at keeping up with it. Yeah, I was a dog with a bone. Yeah. I cat with a mouth. Whatever metaphor you want to use. Well, what was the field work like? Also, how long were you out there in the snow checking

absolutely amazing. Joy of my life. I don't think anything will ever top it.

So imaging put her genetic skill set to use, filling knowledge gaps on where these snow leopards were living and migrating and then applying that to conservation efforts across the boundaries of these countries. And we used like different genetic markers to do that. However, in order to answer these questions, I would, I have to have a lot of samples, which means I have to have data from a lot of individual snow leopards, which would be next to impossible

if my only option was to capture every individual snow leopard that I could and other take like a blood sample or a hair sample or a tissue sample. Yeah. It would be very expensive, but also, like, ethically, it would be stressful for the animals. And so I do what's called non-invasive research, which means we're able to collect genetic data about individuals without ever having to come into contact with them. And like you alluded to, the magic force for that is poop. And we're

able to take those samples and go into the lab and we're able to scrape off those epithelial cells and expose the actual raw DNA. And we can separate that from the DNA of whatever the animal might

“have eaten. And so my trade is all cat poop. And in order to get cat poop, you have to look for it.”

So I spent a lot of time in parts of China on the Tibetan Plateau as well as in southern Kurdistan trying to fill sampling gaps from all of these current collaborations that I managed as part of my PhD. So thankfully, we did have collaborators that had already collected cat poop. And I was able to use that. And so yes, that means that I spent time, mostly in the summer, thank goodness because it's very difficult to access snow leopard habitat

in Central Asia. And as their name might suggest snow leopard, they live in really snowy environments. They live in really rugged environments from like 10,000 feet above elevation all the way to 25,000 feet above elevation. Just for context, Mount Everest is 29,000 feet. Only 4,000 feet higher than snow leopards are kicking it. No oxygen tanks, no gear, no sherpas, no $60,000 selfies, just barefoot, nude, furry, hungry, and evolutionarily adapted. They live on what's called the roof of the

world. And it's super hardcore, right? And there's always certain times of the year that we can go

do that. The first time that I went to the field, however, was in the winter. And because we're at such high elevation, we have thankfully, thank goodness humans have a medication that we can take that helps us process low oxygen environments. That's a problem for most humans because we don't have any physical or genetic advantages that allow us to process these high toxic or low oxygen environments.

“So it's snow leopard, do. And so that's why it's difficult to access some of where they live”

if you are human. So just to back up, there are three species in the world possess these genes that allow them to be successful in low oxygen environments. It's the snow leopard, the Himalayan rat, and there is a group of Nipali people that actually also possess this unique evolutionary adaptation. But me, I'm just this Irish chick. Yeah. So I got nothing, right? So I got to take the pharmaceutical, I got to take the medication to make me stay alive in this environment. And so we did go in the

field. I was in China. I was basically kind of a volunteer for some other research, even though it was

like part of my PhD. It was like a collaborative effort. And it was beautiful. It was wonderful. Like we're at like 11,000 feet. We get there. We're trying, I'm trying to climb a tie to the environment. And everything was mostly fine for the first couple of days. But then we got a bunch of snow dumped on us the night before. So we got something about the bare metric pressure change. Completely obliterated me. The medication wasn't working. We went to lower elevation. I was starting

to get altitude sickness. And so we stated a lower elevation for 24 hours, which low was a joke. We were still at 12,000 feet. Oh my God. And I could not get my resting heart rate below like 120. Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah. So I had to call my PhD advisor back in the state. So I had to let the nothing. Hey, I actually got a, I have to leave because it's now getting dangerous. Like altitude sickness can be really severe, right? So your brain can swell or your lung tissue can swell.

Oh my God. Both of those not great first day in a life. So I had to get out. And so the next year when I came back, it was summer, and I was taking the medication that you take. It's called a seed as alumni. I'm going to butcher how it works. But it basically allows you to process less oxygen in your body in a way that is not harmful. So it prevents you from getting altitude sickness. It prevents dying from like brain swelling or lung swelling. Oh my God. And so I spent a lot

longer in the field. I was in the field on the Tibetan plateau for almost two months looking

“for snow leopards. I think I did five different countries that year. And I spent some time in”

Uzbekistan. And I also spent time in southern Kurdistan. We were working with the local hurting

and look for a gap that you're looking for pooping mountains. And so if you know anything about the behavior of an animal, you can reasonably predict where they're going to poop. They might live in these really really rugged mountains. But if you can get to the top of a mountain, and if there are snow leopards in the area, you can probably find their poop. I mean, it was about 60 or some mile of just transects up and down mountains in about six weeks. Oh my God.

“I mean, humbling, right? Like were you starving all the time? Sort of. I mean, I think I'm a little”

bit of an anomaly when I'm in the field. I said my appetite just gets completely ruined for some

reason that I only want like pretzels and gatorade, so I basically tried to hummingbird, which

cannot possibly be great for my body. But I will say the food that we ate in Kurdistan and in China while in the field was far in above better than anything I've ever done on any of my research projects here in the United States. When I was doing grad work here in the U.S., it's peanut butter sandwiches. It is the type of energy bar that's a hard bowl of egg if you're lucky because you don't have a fridge. When I was in China and in Kurdistan, we cooked over a fire every single night. Delicious. Okay,

but what if you're hiking to a summit and you don't have time to make a fire and roast something. Imaging says you need fat, protein, carbs, and also some quick simple carbohydrates to keep your blood sugar up. And so the best possible option is a whole snickers bar. Really. If you're 14,000

feet above elevation and you're hiking uphill both ways, you need fast, easy energy and it had never

occurred to me that maybe I just needed Snickers bar. But one of the guys on my crew who was like,

“yeah, when you'd have a Snickers budget. And so we had a Snickers budget. I mean, I think that they”

started candy bars to feed soldiers. I didn't know that. Candy bars were invented for that purpose. So that makes sense. I also there were times when I was, you know, broken college and would be like, well, Snickers for lunch it is. And what is, you know, 55% miracle, a Snickers bar. Full circle, right? You can see our confectionology episode. It's all about candy history. Yeah, no, it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that. It was a very special time. We collected a lot of

good data. I did publish one big paper last year from my dissertation about the snow leopards and very proud of it. Take a gander at snow leopard, phylogyography and population structure supports two global populations with single-refugial origin. She wrote that. But she says one

ancillary thing that happened from that research was so interesting. Literally the first day they

were in the field in Kyrgyzstan. I was training some local herders that had decided that they wanted to volunteer. So it was basically training them how to like, pick up, scat in a sterile way, like, giving them gloves, talking about the data, et cetera. And a gentleman reached into his backpack and pulled something out and handed it to me. And I said, what is this? He said, oh, we heard you were coming and we found a scat. And so I collected it and I gave it to you. And it was just a

scat that was in a nylon glove, right? So like not perfectly stored, but secure enough that it was sterile. And I said, great, I marked it down. I was like, first day we haven't even climbed a mountain. We have a sample. This is sample, oh, oh, one. Yeah. I collected like 80 samples on that trip. Came back to United States. We processed the samples. Sample 001 ended up being from a species that has not been seen in that part of the world in over 30 years.

No. And so, way. Yes. Yes. We documented our team for the first time in over 30 years. We documented the presence of a dull DHOLE, which is a very ancient social canid that had been

“extrapeded from most of the former Soviet Union countries for over 30 years. Wow. What?”

Yeah. I know. You ever get a chance to tell that person like, thanks, you're real one. Yeah. Absolutely. They're in the acknowledgments of this paper, and specifically in the actual document of it. This 2022 paper, new distribution record of Dole from Southern Kyrgyzstan using non-adbasid genetic sampling in the journal Cainid Biology and Distribution. It details that this Dole was also called the isiotic wild dog, the red dog, the red wolf, or the whistling dog.

But yeah, it spelled the whole few. Well, it's listed as endangered with a maximum of 2000 mature individuals estimated in the global population. And in the paper itself, it says a scat sample was found by a son of Ranger Tusebeck, Toghtagol Ulu, and we thank him and his family for their contribution. And she says that this single scat sample helped scientists discover that the Dole were not in fact gone, or if they had been, they're now returning to their former range. Or they might be

living cryptically nearby in a pocket of land that humans can't access without a helicopter. And so being able to document that after, you know, decades of surveys, you know, researchers

repeatedly saying, no, we have not seen it. It seems pretty likely that they have not been there

“but now they are. And so like that was just a really, really amazing side effect of this research”

that is meaningful for conservation within those range countries. Well, I have questions from listeners about all kinds of cat stuff. Perfect. Can I ask you? Can we dive in? Absolutely. Let's do it.

But first, as always, let's take a little break to scatter some money into the winds toward a

worthy cause. And this week, Dr. Kansalari chose, aptly, the snow leopard trust, which aims to better understand the endangered snow leopard and protect the cat in partnership with the communities that share its habitats by partnering with indigenous peoples and local communities living across this vast mountainous landscape. And you can see snowlepper.org for more info in their work as well as updated news and pictures and stories about snowleports. In case you

like gorgeous, elusive furry lethal cuties, they go exceptionally hard. So thank you to Eugene for that recommendation. Thanks to sponsors who make a possible to donate to a cosy tweak. Okay. Let's get our huge pause into the mail bag for listener questions. Submitted before we record via patreon.com/ologys where you can also support the show for as little as $1 a month. We love you for that. And people love cats. I love that people love cats and

love you. Okay. A few people had pause questions. Lisa Gorman wanted to know what big cat has the biggest pause size for its body size. They feel like both links and snowleports have

very big pause. And then Miriam, first-time question, ask her to Leyla and JJ all asked about

Toby and whether or not they have Toby and if they're squishy like a house cat. Just a quick pause. If you need the full version of Toby and spy for a life, sung to the tune of Dolly Parton Stoleen, we will link the YouTube on our website so you can get a stuck in your head and you can sing it to your cat daily, like our editor, Mercedes-Baitland us, back to cat feet.

“First and foremost and most important, yes, all cats have Toby and all Toby's are perfect.”

I have touched the Toby's of an anesthetized or surgically asleep bobcat. I have also touched the Toby's of a tiger in a captive setting when it was also anesthetized. There are much rougher than our domestic cats. Okay. There are a lot more callous feeling. They're not exactly as hard as dog pads are, but they're a little bit closer. I don't think snowleports have pink toe pads. They're all going to be like this gray black toe pads. Let's see, the other question was

about the biggest size of the feet relative to body size. Yes, the candidate links is definitely going to probably have the biggest size foot relative to its body as well as the snow leopard. So the candidate links, their feet we call them snow shoes. They literally have built-in snow shoes. Like, you know, we would have snow shoes. We would go hiking in the snow. There's our built-in to their body, isn't that allows them to float on top of snowy environments, same with the snow leopard.

Cats in the genus lakes, there are four of them. There's the candidate links, the North American Bobcat, there's the Iberian links and the erasian links. All four of them have, you know, the shortened tail and different from a snow leopard, which spends a lot of time running down mountains when it's tracking its prey. These candidate links are after smaller prey items, often snow

shoe hairs, and they need to be able to jump really high. And so having really powerful hind legs

with really big snow shoes is a way that they're able to be successful in that environment. That's a great question. Thank you. Well, on the topic of tails, Kelly Shaver and Brain Shenanigans wanted to know what's up with their tails. Kelly says I've heard their crazy strong and dexterous. Brain wanted to know if they're used for balance and then an agreement, Mithail LeP, and Charlotte Felkegaard wanted to know about Lynx's, Matilda asked why do Lynx's have such a short

tail, why do they have the stumpy ones? So why, what do they use it? What do these big cats using their tails for, and how do some get along without them? Yeah, so that's a phenomenal question. It all comes back to these evolutionary adaptations, and I'm so fascinated with the way carnivores in general are adapted to their environment, but also, as a wildcat enthusiast, yes, these are all great questions, because it really points out just interesting ways of the

interact with their environment. All cats with tails, they use their tails for balance to help them turn in different directions, and also they use them as cues to indicate their mood. But also,

“I think subconsciously in some ways, and so my favorite examples of the way cats use their tails”

is with both snow efforts and cheetahs. If it's ever seen a video of a cheetah running across, you know, the certain getty is, it is arguably one of the most beautiful things that you could ever watch. So if you like the Olympics, you will love cheetah videos. Imagine the architecture of a

the front legs in a galloping blur. They can go up to 65 miles an hour faster than my hybrid

on an LA on ramp. Power steering also comes standard. But in addition to being really, really fast, cheetahs also have to change directions incredibly fast, and so they're prey in order to try to outrun them is not only very fast, but they're also zigzagging really quickly. And so the way that cheetahs are able to maintain that speed is they use their tail like a boat rudder, and so cheetahs operate their tails in exactly the same way. Where they will flick their tail back and forth

very quickly to allow them to do these, you know, 45, 90 degree, 180 degree pivot while still maintaining their speed. And snow efforts certainly do the same thing. Their tails are the full length of their body. They have the longest tail relative to their body of any of the other cats. And they use their

tails in the same way as a rudder to help them maintain speed, but also accurate precision

in their directional change when they're, you know, running down mountains after their prey. In the case of snow efforts, however, their tails are the full length of their body, because they can also use them as a scarf when they are sleeping in the snow, which is quite adorable.

“Oh, those are so cute. And I think I forgot to answer a question. There was one more, oh,”

the question about shorter tails. Yeah. I think the answer comes down to hunting adaptation. So all cats are, and in most carnivores, are ambush predators, meaning they are engaging in some type of stalking, and being still as they are trying to get close enough to something to ambush it, to basically explode through this, you know, high speed chase to actually capture and subdue their prey. And so in the case of some of these, some of these smaller cats in the cases of links,

they're pretty generalist hunters. They will take a lot of different prey items, so they'll have a lot of small mammals, smaller birds, and being able to skulk low to the ground, while also maintaining, like, being able to explode with speed, they don't really need to change direction in the same way that a larger cat hunting a larger species would. And so having really, really

powerful hind legs is one reason, and I think that maybe they have lost their tails. Or it's just

not, it's not, it's not needed. And, you know, in terms of domestic cats, like I said earlier, I have a cat here at home a domestic cat called a monk, that she does not have a tail. It is a genetic thing. It is a specific breed that they don't have these tails, and all of these cats, from a domestic scene point, they can have different levels of spinal vertebrae. So,

“like my little cat, she only has, like, I think maybe two vertebrae popping out from her pelvis,”

like where the tail would begin, and that's it. And I don't really see that in the wild cats. Like, there's, it tends to be a lot more consistent than in domestic cats. And I think I just have to do with, like, some inbreeding. You mentioned tails of scarves, and mousepacks didn't want to know why do snow lepers hold their tails in their mouths? So, did Phafka 34, Rebecca Fitchell, Peter Hawkins? I had no idea that they do that. They chew on their own tails?

They do hold their tails. I don't exactly chew on them. So, I think what they're referring to, is we've seen that in captive snow lepers. Like, you can literally google it and find an adorable photo of a snow leopard holding its tail almost like a stuffed animal. I know that young cub certainly probably chase their tails. They certainly attack their mothers' tails. You know, and all play serves a purpose. Like, animals play, but they're playing

because it develops important skills, stalking, and bushing, balance. You know, it's said

“it didn't also, like, social cues. And so, certainly, I think part of the reason that they grab”

their tails has to do with some of that leftover behavior, but we see it most often in a captive setting, and I think some of it has to do with their just boards. Okay. And they're not eating, they're not eating their tails. They're just kind of holding them because why not? It's some to do. It's a fidget spinner for them. They do, but yes, exactly. They have a built-in fidget spinner, so they don't need thumbs. And if you need a deeper dive on this, there's a 2025 article by

Elizma Britz titled "Why do snow leopards bite their tails?" Surprising reasons. And it mentions that yes, wild snow leopards also do this when resting, or when stressed because they fumbled their prey. It's like drowning your sorrows in your own tail. But in environments that can reach 40 degrees below, stuffing the furry rope made out of yourself in your mouth can help heat up air before it hits nasal passages. By the way, how are they even surviving at that altitude

from a respiratory standpoint? So the percentage of oxygen in the air is the same even if you're a top Kilimanjaro, but the air is thinner due to lower atmospheric pressure, so you're getting less oxygen per breath. So how does one survive? I don't know, because I don't study this shit,

Feland-Hemoglobin's, lack of biochemical adaptation to high altitude epoxy on the snow leopard,

reported that researchers believe they believe snow leopards compensate for the poor oxygen capacity of their blood by simply breathing harder, and thus they survive well in this high altitude habitat. But one author on the study noted at the end with, like, the hint of exasperation, quote, "We still don't know how snow leopards adapt to high altitudes. Our study raised more questions than any answer." Which sounds like they need to stuff a snow leopard tail in their mouth for some

self soothing. Well, you mentioned something about growing up, and is this snow leopard, "Reast per anyone who's known, how do they live in such harsh and dangerous environments?"

Peter Hankens had that question too, but "Reast per anyone who's known, what does a good

“mom do to teach their babies how to survive and hunt on the sides of cliffs?" How do they do it?”

Jennifer Gordon wants to know why they're so bouncy. They act like they have springs and rubber in their legs, but yeah, how are they learning how to survive on the side of cliffs and bounce around being so cute? So, like with all cats, the cubs spend a long period of time with their mothers. So, most larger cats are spending a minimum of 12 months with their mothers. Sometimes up to 18 months, usually the males, the young males tend to leave their mother earlier because they

just, like, can't wait to break out in the world, and the females tend to stay a little bit longer. The way they're able to be successful is trial and error, washing mom, but then also having

supervised--first they're fed by mom, then they watch mom, then sometimes they are helping mom,

then they are inevitably occasionally hunting on their own, but as they're young, they're not that successful. So, they come back home and they've got a seasoned hunter who is their mom, who is not just providing their diet at this point, but augmenting it. They're having the ability to fail through guidance under their mother. And this process, again, it does take about 12 months, because they have to be adult size before they're even going to be able to take down their prey.

A lot of snow leopard prey is much larger in both size and weight than they are. And a lot of their prey is very dangerous because they have very, very large horns. And then when you add to the danger of running down a mountain, certainly there are snow leopards, both the unsnow leopards and old snow leopards that do not survive hunting attempts either because they are gorded by the animal they are hunting, like a marker or really really large sheep that has horns that are longer than

“my arm. Oh God. But also sometimes they miscalculate and they slip and they fall. And so I think”

it's pretty likely that even those snow leopards are successful in these really harsh environments. They also do get injured a lot. I think it's pretty unlikely that a snow leopard goes through its life without having several ribs broken because they are literally being thrown against rocks as they are trying to bring down their large prey items. Oh my God. And I'm like it's that ice is not forgiving. It can look fluffy but it's and everything is so much steeper than you can

probably possibly even fathom. You know I've seen a snow leopard in the summer in China when it was like 50 degrees out and that is a way too hot for a snow leopard. They were not having a good time. It's like a husky. People have husky that just lie down in the snow and stay they're all day. The numbers are 100% the same way. And while there are somewhere between three and 7,000 snow leopards left in the wild, there are over 500 in zoos. None of those zoos

are on a mountaintop at 20,000 feet. So how do they cope? Not just with the lack of hunting that on we of daily room service and the glare of the public eye, but also with these increasingly hot temperatures. So I looked into this and one who keep a reported that in the summer, the snow leopards are given access to AC, shade, pools and misters. Kind of like if you lived in Florida. Well, a few people Janelle Esman, brain again, Quincy, Rubbishow and Rachel May. Quincy and Rachel

“wanted to know just why are they so cute? And I think we know that. But Janelle and brainwanners know”

are they as soft and flupy as they look? I have not touched a snow leopard. So it's the woodland part zoo. I did get to see very close their adult female had three cups. And so I got to see them fairly up close. Therefore is similar to both tigers and bobcats in that. It's not a silky as some of our housecats are. And that's because they often have like a double coat. They need to have a coat that allows them to maintain that warmth to protect that warmth. And their undercoat is going to be a lot

denser and thicker than their top coat. And they're able to trap air in between those two layers that helps them maintain their warmth. And as a result, their fur tends to be a little bit longer.

And it's also a little bit more coarse. But it still has a nice fluffiness to it. And a lot of

“cats are that way as well. But it's not like a stuffed animal. It's not like a stuffed animal”

unfortunately. Although I do agree. They are absolutely, I mean all cats are adorable. Some might be more adorable than others. I usually think that the snow leopard is the most beautiful. It's very ethereal. Snow leopards are also called ghost cats. So put that in your crossword and smoke it. Their eyes are different colors relative to all the other cats. What color are their eyes? They have this like beautiful greenish yellow eye.

A lot of the wild cats have these like brownish gold eyes. But snow leopards tend to have like a

very greenish yellow almost not exactly blue. But like a more aquamarine color that tends to really

just glow a lot. And they're quite beautiful. Amanda Lask, Sarah E. G. Kim, Justin Mapos and Zina wanted to ask a vocalization question. I should have thought of earlier. Do they meow? Do any of the becats meow? Yes, she does meow. Well, she does do a chirping. It's a very high pit. It almost is very bird-like. So it depends on what they're talking to. So most adult females of all species for the cats. I can include in the big ones like the tigers. They will have this

kind of like high-pitched chirping that they use when they're calling their kittens. When female cats are in heat, they tend to have like this type of like higher pitched. Oh, I've got it.

Squawking, that sounds kind of like demoralizing. It's not exactly a squawk. It's more of,

it is, well, you know, it is kind of squawking. Like bobcat, female bobcats when they are in heat, they make this sound that sounds like someone a human screaming blood curdling screams. That's not cute at all. It's terrifying in the woods at 2 a.m. Especially if you don't know what

“it is. And that's how I learned that bobcats make that sound in heat when I was a kid. Oh, my god.”

But all cats will do that. Like mountain lions will do that as well. It's like it's kind of squawking, chirping, type sound. A little bit different than a true meow. Most cats spend the majority of their time alone. Okay. They don't necessarily need to be communicating with a lot of other people around them to say, where's my snacks? Right. They're communicating with poop versus meow. Yes, that makes tons of sense. Daniel Johnson and Willow as well as

win and Michelle Ring wanted to know about lions, female lions. Willow wants to know why do lions have a main and then win and Michelle wants to know what's to deal with female lions that grow mains or do male behavior. Win says icons. Love. Love. So how what is going on with mains and sexual dimorphism and lions? Yeah. So lions are definitely different than all of the rest of the big cats, specifically because the females live in groups throughout their entire

life with one or two males together. They're all called a pride. So behaviorally, they're already very, they're more doglike in that way compared to the rest of the cat. But in terms of the sexual dimorphism, the main is thought to be an indication of fitness. So males that are more dominant, it's not so much the size of the main, although that is a factor, it seems that the color is also incredibly important. More dominant males have larger mains and darker colored

mains. And they tend to maintain their territories better than males that just don't have those mains. And I don't know if that's explicitly linked to testosterone. You know, that is driving the secondary sex characteristics that we see so often in mammals. Certainly it has to be related to it in some capacity. But then when it comes to females that are potentially

“growing mains, I think that probably has to do with a response to either males losing control of their”

pride. Well, meaning that either they've gotten to old competing male has come in. So you want to get yourself a look at the 2016 paper, rare observation of the existence and masculine behavior of main lioness in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, in the African Journal of Ecology, which notes that potential factors driving main development in male lions are thought to include genetics, temperature, nutritional status, hormones, and vegetation thickness. And then you can follow

that paper up with Discover Magazine's 2022 piece titled, "It's rare, but a lioness can grow a main," which dished that Avis, a 16-year-old male lion, at the Tepeca Zoo, passed away due to old age. And a few months later, his geriatric 18-year-old female counterpart, Zuri, began growing a main. And it's most likely due to raise testosterone after Avis's death. Now, Shana Simpson is a curator at the zoo and told Discover Magazine that, "Yes, this can happen in a scarcity of male lions

duties are to hunt and take care of the young." So yeah, a trad lioness can be gender fluid

“when the conditions are right for her. But I want to imagine, like we see in fish communities,”

there are species of fish. We're in the absence of a male, a female can actually literally become a reproductive male. Wonderful. Certainly, that is not the case in mammals. We're not ever going to see a like a female lion be able to become an actual biological male to be able to reproduce. But some of those behaviors can serve to like the help protect the

pride, specifically because roaming males will always try to fight males that have pride

because they want to path on our genes. So if they drive out the existing king, the existing reigning males, then they basically take over the pride and then they become in charge. I had no clue and I do find them to be icons. So our editor, Jake Jaffee's partner, Joey, had a question and wanted to know, quote, "are any other big cats communists?" With regards to the male, Cheetahs form what are called coalition. Sometimes they're related

brothers, sometimes they're not. And they tend to just like live together for their entire life in bands of four or five. They don't have a pride. They don't hang out with females around, but they tend to harass and breathe females as a group. This is a very serious question, Mitch the fish Elizabeth Steley, Dr. Lena Carpenter, Anita Chen, Lauren Cooper, would love to know that they like cat nip. Elizabeth asked, "Do they encounter cat nip in the

wild and get silly?" Any idea? I don't know. Sort of. So I, there was in Ferguson for a conference and a couple big cat scientists. We were on horseback, hiding through these beautiful, beautiful mountains. There's lots of beautiful tall grass. And I started to smell something and I was

like, "What is that smell that I'm smelling?" And we basically rounded the corner of this river

and opened up into a meadow that was full of a plant called Bee Ballum. It's something in the mint family, which is a beautiful, beautiful smelling plant. It just looks like it's tiny little puff balls. But also, we were surrounded by a field of naturally wild growing Hindu Kush. And I was, I don't know. I was like speechless. I was like this is a very unique experience

“and I don't know how to process this experience. I think that's kind of similar to cat nip.”

It does not function in the same way. So cat nip, the reason cat love cat nip, is because it's a psychoactive agent, but it is also a sexual stimulant. Oh, it's like a quailude. It's like a quailude

and, yes, an LSD. It might not last for a very long, but it's like 10 minutes of like your scene

things and your feelings things. And it sends them into a frenzy. Now, when I was at the tiger sanctuary in undergrad, we would often try to provide enrichment because they're captive animals, or like they have these huge home ranges and they're in like these, you know, small enclosures. And, you know, doing our best to maximize the quality of your life. And so a lot of their enrichment involved sent some of the cats like cat nip. I wouldn't say they went crazy for cat nip. The things

that big cats really, really like for some reason cat, the tigers in particular, they freaking love to Christmas tree. You throw a whole Christmas tree in there and they would just go bonkers like rolling around in it, rising around, maybe it's like the tan ends or the the oils and the pine and stuff, but they freaking loved it. And what they love even more and this is across all different big cat species that we've seen in captivity and it has been used some

in the wild that when we're trying to draw cats in, cats love Calvin Klein obsession for men.

“Okay, I have heard that there might be like, "Sivet, what is it?" What is it called?”

Oh, is it like a gland or something from diva? Yeah, is there a scent gland in there? I'm not sure exactly what it is about Calvin Klein, but it is something that like the snow upwards go crazy for if seen in captivity, I've seen like the bobcats go bonkers for it, I've seen captive tigers go crazy for it. I mean, they, I mean, they'll kill your mama to get closer to that smell. So who's in charge of figuring out what scent would make a tiger want to kill

your mother? It turns out it's Pat Thomas, a guy who worked at the Bronx Zoo as the general curator of the wildlife conservation society. So looking for enrichment options, Pat went out got a bunch of different perfumes and collones in 2005 and of all of them, Calvin Klein's obsession for men had these wild animals going feral, rubbing up on it like it was their long lost high school sweetheart. Since then, it's been a staple for biologists who just spritz some obsession on camera traps

in the creation of this obsession for men is Anne Gottlieb, who told the guardian newspaper that

“the scent is, quote, "combination of this likable vanilla heart married to this fresh green top”

note. It creates tension and said. It also has elements of civitone, which is a synthetic version of a musk harvested from the anal adjacent glands of a feline like creature called a civit. So exercise caution wearing this cologne on a date, especially if that date happens to take place in an echo dory and rain forest. I wonder if domestic cats like it? Do you think domestic cats would be like, "bring it on?" You know, I'm going to go ahead and say yes because when I was

at the tiger's sanctuary and learned that Calvin Klein obsession for men was like the number one go to for the tigers, I thought it was hilarious because that's a cologne that my stepdad wore. And my cats lived with my parents for like two summers when I was doing fieldwork and they loved

my dad. So yeah, my God. That's amazing. Someone out there, I hope someone does a test on that.

And I know we're talking, I know I'm making you talk about domestic cats and wild ones, but air victor Lynette Davia, John McGrill, Ashton McCall, Harper Atlas, Cassidy Dean, Win and Amelia Hines, in AJ's words, ask most importantly, do big cats make biscuits and can they loaf

“like a domestic cat? Yes, the loaf is ubiquitous, I think. Okay. It's a comfort thing, right?”

Like the relaxation technique, I think that overall in the wild cats will do that less because the loaf is like the pinnacle of relaxation, right? Like they don't need to be on alert in our house, they're fully relaxed. So I don't think that wild cats do that as much because they have to be ready at a moment's notice for anything, whether that's opportunistic food source, a potential predator, or anything in their environment, they're on more high alert, but yes, they do loaf.

And wait, what was the second question? A biscuits? Yes, they do mean biscuits. I have seen

videos on camera traps of mountain lions making biscuits get this on fallen trees. I wonder why? So they're not doing it on soft subject, I think it's mostly because they're active, they're using it as it's a communication thing. So we do know that cats when they will spray urine on like the backs of trees or on the backs of boulders, they will sometimes spray, but then they do what's what we call a scrape where they take their back legs, and they basically moonwalk them a little

bit back and forth on the ground to leave these linear like ski marks on those. And that is a type of communication. They also will of course like they're sharpening their claws on things, but it's more hard core biscuit making. Okay, oh, might not be a grandma's quilt, but they're out there on a tree doing it. They're like literally shredding a tree. Yeah, you know, a few people alley browns, if you have Mr. Lowe's Trevor Ogbore and Greg Wallick, Papka 34, Rachel May,

wanted to know, well, Greg asks, even though snow lepers typically aren't aggressive toward humans, can they talk about the scare they got attacked in late January, trying to take a selfie with a snow leopard, maybe some safety guidelines if you see a big cat, Sophia Pistios asked if I were to encounter one on a hike like a mountain lion or something close, how do I defend

“myself? So yeah, alley ones. So what do you do if you encounter a big cat in the wild?”

These are great questions. I'll comment on the snow leopard in the news first. So in late January, a skier in northern China saw a snow leopard on the side of the road, got out of her vehicle or was already on foot and not exactly sure. She approached the snow leopard and was able to get very close to it. She wanted to take a selfie with that cat and unfortunately that cat attacked her. It bit her neck or her face and then kind of sat on top of her, which is a little bit weird.

So that's a really unique situation, not just because unfortunately it was human initiated,

which is obviously always a problem. The underlying message that I will always reiterate is that

we should never approach wild and almost we should definitely never approach something that can hurt us. You know, but that in definitely includes big cats as predators. Just to heads up, she survived the crush of the leopard's jaw. Thanks to her ski helmet, but there is a very really inducing video of her being led away from the scene. She's copying her face, which is gushing blood. In this particular case, what was notable about the attack,

is that prior to this, there are no known documented attacks by a snow leopard on a human. Individual people make poor decisions like the skier did. She definitely made a poor decision. But snow leopard, they're also just very tolerant of people. Unfortunately, when we do see these instances of a big cat attacking a person, it is often because the person was in the wrong place the wrong time. And we're seeing increasing examples where young animals or starving

mountain lions are attacking people. And oftentimes, unfortunately, when that animal is often

“captured and killed as a result of attacking a human, we often find that these animals are starving.”

And so they are doing this as a last-ditch effort. It is not something that we are not normal food sources for any of the big cats. Now, certainly, of course, there are stories of like the man-eating tigers and certain parts of India. And those are individuals that has become fixated on people. And those animals obviously pose a significant safety risk. And unfortunately, they do need to be removed because it poses such a significant human risk.

Side note, this is not a super new phenomenon, but it is relatively rare, especially considering that the tiger's numbers used to be potentially in the tens or hundreds of thousands before 1875. When 80,000 of them were slaughtered by bullets and steel traps over just a few decades. So, with only around 5,000 left in the wild today, around 50 humans are killed by them each year. But well over 300 people are trampled by elephants. But many of the tiger attacks on humans

come from proximity. People are encroaching further and further into their habitat and also decimating what would be the tiger's prey, otherwise. Now, I don't know what your deal is, but if you can't get enough of tigers eating people, you may want to thumb through a book called The Man Eaters of Kumon, the 1944 memoir by Jim Corbett, who is a naturalist and a tiger hunter. And yes, the term "man eater," it's problematic on so many fronts. Not the least of them

sexism, but also it's got a lot of colonialist overtones. But Corbett's book apparently includes many tales of such attacks, including a tiger's who killed over 400 people. They found out later that it was mainly because she had been shot in the mouth and couldn't use her teeth to full capacity, but could still not on slow, squishy people. And I get it. We're probably delicious. Also, even if they were just pissed at humans, I would get it. I would be like,

you know what, justified. And while I cannot personally endorse this book because it's sad, scary. I hear it does conclude with Jim's assertion that he would rather photograph than shoot the tigers. Now, more recently from 2016 to 2018, there was a female tiger in India named T1, and she had two cups, and the three of them were responsible for over a dozen human deaths. And authorities insisted that she had, quote, developed a taste for human flesh.

She evades traps. She learns her potential assassins tricks. She's on the loose for years. What could they do? One 2018 NPR piece titled Calvin Klein's obsession could be the trick to catching a tiger. Layed out that they were going to try the cologne, but it was another two years before T1 was shot

“lurking near a farmer's market. Now, how can you avoid being a kitty cat treat?”

The most important thing for big cats is to make eye contact because if they know that you can see them,

that is going to change her behavior. Oh, you also need to get big. So if you see a mountain lion, it's okay to make eye contact. If you also yell at it, you throw your hands up in the air. If you can safely grab something without bending over for too long or turning your back, you throw something at it. Oh, okay. Wow. That's not the same for all species, right? So like we certainly hear a lot about the difference between like certain brown bears or brown bears,

versus black bears. Like you don't make eye contact with a brown bear because they're incredibly aggressive. But I don't think that making eye contact versus not making eye contact is going to help in the case of like a tiger because they're so large. They're a little bit different in their ambush. The ability like they're so big. They're just really not afraid of anything, but a mountain lion, which is probably what we're most likely to see listeners are most likely to encounter

or even maybe a leopard or a gyber, making eye contact in being big and yelling and not backing

“down is the most important thing. It is really important to people always worry about the claws.”

Obviously, I would be worried about them too. But you also need to worry about the

mouth because the mouth is what is going to be the most dangerous part. And so basically fighting

back a hundred percent is what you need. Like at this point, if you were to come into close contact with a cat lying down and being small is not going to work in your favor. You're going to have to get into a fist fight with that cat. Wow. Thanks, Leigh. Mountain lions do not view us as something that they can easily take down. Okay. That's good. So I will say if you're ever out in the was and this happened to me several years ago, I was in California. We were doing some camera

trapping work. I'm looking down. I'm walking through the sand and all of a sudden I see a cat

And I reached down to grab my bear spray because it's a great,

“way to protect yourself. And I realize that my bear spray is in the truck. Oh, no.”

But I've been down and I grab a rock and I just keep walking. And then I see a second set of prints.

And this track is like three times the size of the first one that I saw and I said, oh God, this is an adult mountain lion with a teenage cup. Oh my God. This is not, this is unilaterally not great guys. And the cat tracks were going into opposite direction, which means we had passed right by them and not known it on the little old like trail road. Think that I wasn't alone. But we're like, you know what, we are either going to get eaten or were not. And all of a sudden, all of the ground

squirrels and the tree squirrels just start going bonkers or making all of this noise. They were not talking about us. They were 100% talking about the carnivores that had been walking away from us. Had gotten to our truck, saw the truck didn't like it because truck human bad. And they had turned around and walked the other way, which meant they were walking directly towards us. Oh, no. So not only had we walked past them without knowing, but we were then walking toward each other.

And the the birds were making a lot of noise and all of a sudden the bushes on either side of us exploded. Like two bushes, left side of the road, right side of the boat, explode, explode. We didn't ever see a single thing, but we knew that we had somehow startled both the mountain

lions and we had split up, mom and baby. And that's even worse. Oh my God. And so we basically,

we did not run, you know, you just don't run, but you just walk, walk softly and carry a big stick or in this case a rock and look over each other's backs. But if the hair on the back of your neck stands up or the squirrels and the birds start like angrily calling, that means there

“is a carnivore in the immediate vicinity and you need to look up and look around. Oh my God,”

when you got to the truck or you just sweating like, wow, I, I, I couldn't decide if I was an idiot because I really wanted to see the mountain lion or if, you know, if that, I couldn't decide if that was a good mental decision or not that I really was slightly disappointed that I didn't see the mountain lion, but I was very shocked and granted they were not trying to hurt us, but certainly it was just one of those great examples of you have no idea what you're walking past or what

is watching you and the wood, which is the thrill of the woods, but it's also good to have

bear spray and a rock 100%. Oh, never forget the bear spray. That's pretty good advice. You know,

unfortunately there are fewer and fewer around us and last lesson or question I wanted to ask is Kelly Shaber, I want to know what's the impact of the new walls and fences along this U.S. Southern border on native cats, cheese marker wanted to know where they also endangered,

“Ashley O'Brien wants to know which big cats are the most endangered and a lot of folks just want”

to know like M.A.K. for some questions or what's the number one thing the average person can do to help support conservation efforts of big cats. These are all same tasks of questions, and so broadly the most common threats for all of the wild cats include habitat fragmentation. That fragmentation can either happen through like human development, mining or agriculture or obviously urban sprawl, but also things like climate change, climate change is dramatically altering

habitats and drying up wetlands. It's changing snow patterns. It's shrinking their habitats. And so these animals are having more difficult times meeting their resource needs because their prey is moving in response to that habitat changes as well. Hoaching remains a significant issue for a lot of different cats in a lot of different parts of the world. The wildlife trade market is the second most prolific underground market in the world, second to drug trafficking.

Wow. And so there is a lot of demand for cats and certainly taking cats for their pets and for like you know alternative medicine is illegal in most parts of the world, but that does not stop poaching efforts. And so in particular, like as as tigers, our populations are dwindling, the focus is shifting from tigers to like clouded leopard in terms of taking them for their parts. And so we're seeing that kind of trickle down effect on lots of different species.

And in the case of creating barriers to their habitat, that's a significant problem. But the question with regards to like border walls, expanding them population connectivity is being dramatically impacted by expanding these border walls. Completely obliterating habitat, which means prey items are not sticking around there, which means predators are not able to meet their resource needs there. But then it's also creating impermeable barriers.

Imaging notes that individual cats can get stuck in fencing, but on a greater scale, these artificial borders limit breeding and gene flow, which compromises the genetic health of wild populations, which is of course one of Dr. Kenslare's research focuses.

that's going to negatively impact mountain lions and Texas, New Mexico and traveling all

we have to California. Everything is connected in an ecosystem. And when one thing is negatively impacted, the broader community is also going to be negatively impacted. And the mega feelings and the most danger are the amore leopard, the Sumatron tiger, and the South China tiger. The latter, which hasn't been spotted for over 40 years, and researchers think is most likely extinct. Now the Iberian links, not technically a big cat, is also at high risk of extinction.

So this is what many researchers would call a bummer. And so it's really hard. It's really hard for us. And if we care about cats or care about an individual individual species, how do we make a positive impact on an individual species, or a population, or a sweetest species as a

“whole? Like if you care about big cats, what are the things that you can do? I think the most”

important thing that we can remember is that humans and wildlife are inextricably linked in one way or another. And so we can't successfully combat issues with conservation if we're not also caring about people. And that means either helping people meet their needs, like if a cat is killing their livestock, how do we make sure that those people are able to recoup that loss without hurting the cat itself? But also when it comes to social injustice, we can't care

about animals and not care about the people that live alongside them. Right. And so it's incredibly important that if you care about a tiger, you better have a global mindset. You can't live in

the United States and be like, "Man, African love lions." I think leopard are amazing and turn

your nose up at different cultures in Central Asia, or think that things are happening on the news, don't matter, or that it's apolitical. Everything is political. And so having that global mindset is so incredibly important. It's important to how we interact with people, but it's also really directly related to how we are able to be successful in conservation, because the borders that we're talking about, like a snow leopard doesn't know when it's in Russia versus China. You know, a

bobcat doesn't know if it is in Montana or if it's in Wyoming. Yeah. And a mountain lion has no idea what Texas is. It has no idea what Mexico is. We do, but those are all artificial constructs. And I know that sounds philosophical and I know that might seem like it's straight in from wildlife,

but that's incredibly important. And so in my case, as a researcher, I'm a Western American

researcher who's been a lot of time in Central Asia. And I feel really strongly that I was a guest researcher, like it was my PhD and really proud of it, but I also was a guest researcher alongside Kurdies researchers, who's back researchers, Chinese researchers, Russian researchers. And those are the people who are the stewards of the species that I was studying because it lives in their country, not mine. And so venturing those voices and increasing that collaborative potential is how we

“support conservation. And obviously, dollars matter. And so if you want to give your dollars to an”

organization, an organization that works on the ground with wildlife, but works on the ground with people who live alongside wildlife is very important. What is it? What's the hardest part about working with big cats? Yeah, so I think the thing that's wanting this tough is getting people to agree to share data. And so if you're trying to ask these big scale questions about species that are crossing borders, collaboration is so incredibly important. But because we're dealing with people,

we're dealing with governments, we're dealing with like political infrastructure, like it's hard to, but certainly, anti-carnavore semanticism is so prevalent in some of the parts of the world, which is why we have so few large carnivores in the United States in particular and in lots of Europe. They've all been expropriated. They've been driven out. Everyone hates a carnivore. Everyone, I will say people like cats more than they like dogs, but like the wolf is the poster child

of just being hated. Yeah. Why are people killing them? We have to make it not the only option. And so conservation is about people. And that's a good thing, but it's also can be kind of annoying too. Right. Right. It's so much of wildlife historically. It's been like what is the intersection of humans and the species instead of what is best for the species, of course. Absolutely. What about

“your, I mean, how do you even decide? But what is your favorite thing about big cats?”

I think for me, it's just, I'm gonna make a bold statement. Everything about wild cats is so much better than every other carnivore. I know we're not supposed to anthropomorphize, but I think it's okay to do it in this context. They are just, they're so audacious in everything that they do. Everything about them is like fall into the wall, right? Like all of our annotations, they're size. The way their teeth work, the way their eyes work, the speeds that they

can run, the environments that they're willing to navigate, the prey that they're willing to take. And in the way that they look, and then I'll but also in the few times that I've had interactions with wild cats, like for live trapping, you know, we do let them go, we're not killing them. All of these cats, they're just ready to go. Like they will have your entire lineage. They'll

respect for how incredibly grumpy and audacious in bad ass cats are. That's my professional opinion.

“They have a moxie and a self-position that we all can aspire to, I believe.”

I'm going to say I wish that I was that cool. Yeah. And since I have a lot of family in Montana, we made a plan to meet in three dimensions. Let's go on a hike. We'll find some cat tracks. We can look at animal poop together, and maybe if you have queries, and if you have questions about poop, you can send those to me as well. I don't just do cat poop. I do lots of different poop. I'll bring the gloves. Non-human, non-human. Let me go ahead and clarify that.

It's a good thing. Although we did get a sample, we did get a sample from my dissertation that was someone picked a human poop. Oh, I don't know if it was me. I mean, we just go ahead. I was in charge. Let's just say it with me. You know, I might as well take the fall for that one.

You picked it up. Oh my god, this is amazing. You are the best. Thank you so much.

Sally, thank you for having me. So ask the line people, people, questions, because how

“also are you supposed to learn that you can do breaks through research with a turd and a glove?”

Dr. Imaging Kansalari, thank you for being here and to follow her on social media. You can look for her at the handle, biologist, imaging, on blue sky, and Instagram. Also, if you just heard a little bit of a jingle that was Grammys collar, we're hanging out while I record this. Also, Imaging is on LinkedIn, and she posted that after federal budget cuts, her last position was prematurely terminated, and so she is actively seeking a permanent position in the wildlife

field, and as a conservation biologist, she has a very negative experience with NGOs, government agencies, and international research, and is looking for program management positions in wildlife biology. So, hit her up. She is a rare gem, and also an amazing science communicator. You can find us atology. Some blue sky and Instagram, and I'm at Ali Ward on both. We have shorter

kid-friendly and classroom safe versions ofologies called Smolleges, SMOLO, GIS. I can never

do that in one take, but whatever. And Smolleges are in their own feed, whatever you get podcasts. Alleges merch is available at allegesmerge.com. You can join our Patreon and support the show for a dollar at patreon.com/alleges. Erin Talbert, Admin's Theology's podcast Facebook group, Avaline Malik, makes our professional transcripts, Caliard Wired as the website. No well, deal worth, tracks down our calendar, scheduling producer, Susan Hale, scales, summits, every week

as managing director, and the sonic roars of editor Jake Chaffey, and lead editor, Mercedes Madeland of Madeland audio, could be heard for thousands of miles. Nick Thorburn, churped the theme music, and if you stick around to the very end, you know, I may tell you secret. This week, I love daylight savings. I love when it gets darker later, partly because I feel you go for a walk or a jog, and there's reduced risk of a man jumping out of the bushes.

“And honestly, you might be like, "Why don't worry about that?" And I agree with you,”

not to worry about too much, but one of the last times I went for a jog, a man did jump out of the bushes, saying that he could punch me if he wanted. And I was like, "Please don't." And then it was fine. I just like it being dark later on. I think it's a vibe. And it's such a bummer because it seems like when I was a kid, it stayed lighter later in the summer, and I was like lamenting

that once that, you know, when I was a kid, it just seemed like the day never ended, and that was

so great. And then I realized that I live in LA, but I grew up in Northern California, and the reality is it did get darker later. Because I was more north, duh, I'm like 400 miles south in latitude for where I grew up. So yeah, if you live in LA, it does get darker earlier. It's not just the March of Time, but it is nostalgic, either way. Go watch a sunset. It's free, and it's nice. All right, bye bye.