Snow Leopard Attack - The Ghost of the Mountains

Hello everyone and welcome back to two thin claw podcast. I am Jeff Larson. We have

West Larson, our bare biologist, but I normally always introduce first, but tell me.

I'm glad you did yourself first. I decided to jump. I feel I'm feeling big. You know I'm feeling like I have the top spot right now. I have to agree with us. And then, always in third we have Mike Smith with us. 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 become closer friends since, especially because herner has been 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 so 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 it. I'm feeling. I've woken up twice today and both times not known that I was in America. And I've been here for like three days, so it's like, get a grip, buddy. Yeah, 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-bird drip. Yeah. And you were just asleep. They're all kind of jealous of that. Nice. He's morning. The people that I recommend. 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, 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 imaging here to fact check me. Um, imaging. 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, uh, and just say what you need to say about what I'm, you like it.”

Well, especially if I'm saying something wrong. Don't we typically make like a horn noise just go like horn. And then we get in there. Yeah, just do whatever noise you have to do that. All right. On April 21, snow leopard expert Kamal Phapa woke up in a tiny village in the food 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. So I thought it 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, we'll scavenge this meat as well and take it from snow leopard's which is how we're going to get some some revenge on these people. Don't let the name of that sheep fool you

“either. They're not blue. They're that's what I was thinking to. Yeah. I'm pretty excited about that still.”

Imaging not really seen a lot of a lot of blue sheep, right? I have seen a lot of blue sheep and I have seen a snow leopard hunt a herd of blue sheep. They are blue. No, I'm just kidding. They're not. She's a blueish tint to them. But yeah, a little bit of gray. So this village was usually really quite in 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'Colgoth, 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 and empty basket and Kamal noticed a lot of other people headed in that direction with large bamboo

fingers. Um, gray, then blue, or whatever. After he talked to a couple of 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 that one. Yeah. So it killed 45 and it only ate one. And imaging, there's a term for this, right? Feeding frenzy, uh, term. What, what, what, what, what, what time are you in it? What do we think enough? That's when 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”

that it's more of a frenzy based thing based on like being trapped in a corral. I think that's my opinion. I've seen it call Joey Chestnutting, but just kidding. It's when it's with dogs, hot dogs, my surrounds and skittles. Um, oh my gosh. I think I think your term is much better of feeding for the skittles. 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 caching 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, 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. Yeah, we don't want to offend the serial killers. There, this is a surplus surplus on a

liver. Yeah. Like Ted Bundy. I don't know. He didn't kill that many people. A surplus, I would say, but like a competitive amount of effort. How many people is a surplus when it comes to murdering

“one, two, a lot of people I think. Yeah, I would say. Maybe that's the snow leopard's name in the”

story. Yeah, Ted Bundy. I think he got like a leopard name at least 30. Oh, yeah, we'll see. This

leopard's got him beat. And then he said he did like a hundred. Yeah, I don't they're always

exaggerating. I wonder how many the leopard says it's killed too. 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 are sorry, had killed and left all of them, but one I don't only fed on one. So him and his colleagues started following these people toward this Coral, 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, yeah. So he actually went back to the village and along the way he ran into the owner of this Coral and most of the goats. This guy was visibly shaken,

“but he assured them that he would take photos of all this carnage and then document everything”

for these men. A big part of the reasoning behind that is just that they needed proof that this was a depredation event so they could get some compensation for these kills, which all that imaging talk about here in a bit because I know you have some insight into that. Bit later that afternoon, someone finds Kamal in the village and tells him that the snow leopard was actually still trapped inside of this Coral 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 translate 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 11pm when they finally all decide

we'll just let it out and no one's going to harm this leopard. But when they get down there the leopard was gone. They found a gap in the structure where he'd 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 high tailed it into the mountains but then they hear a goat bleeding from another Coral 20 meters away. They run to this Coral, peer in and the leopard's inside

killing all of those goats. It had just left 40, yes 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. I'm with you Jeff. This is a Ted Bundy. I'm snow leopard. I'm out of doubt. I'm a jeans with you and she's a snow leopard expert. That was a good poll on that. It's not factual at this point.

It all tracks. All right, so now the villagers are enraged. How many did you get in this new one?

Maybe that's what some of these injured ones did. Who knows? Yeah. They say though that this particular leopard is habituated to killing livestock and that it could start attacking people too. They try to pull some of these live goats out of the Coral. They get a big plastic drum that they decide they'll catch the leopard in and translocate it and come all 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." 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 Imaging 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 leopard. 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”

car out 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, you can say wrong, so in the case of like feeding wildlife obviously clear cut, like don't do that, not a great idea. But in the case of snow leopard, when we see these incidents happen, so often it's mostly because of like in equity 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 hurting communities

that live alongside their livestock and they move with them and they often have like temporary paddocks or seasonal like pastures that they will put animals in. And unfortunately, so many of these, they don't have roofs. They don't have like chain link fences over top of them, you know, the sheep or the livestock can't get out because it's like a six foot tall rock wall, but that's, you know, that's nothing, that's peanuts to a snow leopard. So these cats are easily

able to jump in, but then sometimes they can't get out, or maybe there is a roof, but it's got holes all over it. And so the cats get in there and it's just like a fox in the in the henhouse, 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 friends are that killing friendsy. And so it's a, 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 Wes, like this is obviously a problem animal that needs to be removed,

“but two things I think are really important. One, snow leopards are not a direct threat to people”

in the same way that like common leopards are or tigers are in certain parts of the range and just 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, it's a, it's a snow leopard. It's a, it's an apex carnivore. It's, you know, nationally important. It's culturally important. It's spiritually important. And if there's a way to to minimize the effects, the negative effects on both the animal and the person, that's what we want to see. And we do often see it. So in like, in this example, having programs that reimburse herders for livestock loss

is something that incentivizes locals to not engage in retaliatory killing, which is a term that we use to explain like a, 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, we'll have a conservation segment at the end where we can

“dive into that a little bit deeper, because I think those programs are so important, especially”

for an animal that's as rare and as threatened as a snow leopard. But the thing, you know, the

thing that you've just brought up a second ago that is held true for most of our history with snow

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 emoji. Just, it seems like you're really letting this snow leopard off the hook to me. And if you're that snow leopard, you don't need to kill 50 goats and only one. I have a issue. That's fair. I mean, I guess that makes me a Ted Bundy apologist. You're an abler. Yeah, when the Ted Bundy stuff happened,

“you would just kind of be like, like, like, I mean, he got kind of excited. I think it's not the”

set up a sound bite that I want to be so kidding 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 inclusion there while are there and most better. But I also think we need to be teaching snow leopards only one or two goats if they break through. You know, I think that you need the charge on that curriculum. Jeff, just carrying a white board out in the

Himmel is trying to talk to snow leopards. When I was working in the field, I worked on a lot of different crews. And I know one of the biggest pain points for people working in the office was fueling and gas. And if you manage a crew, whether it's construction, landscaping, wildlife, whatever, you know that when your people go out and pay for gas materials, it causes all types of issues. And your accountant is constantly chasing down receipts at the end of the month and trying to

fix everything and coast pay fixes all of that for you. Coast pay is the modern fuel card and expense

management tool built for fleets. This isn't software built by someone who's never run a crew.

Fuel maintenance materials are now all on one card with real control and instant visibility. So you can set real-time spending limits. You can say fuel only fuel in materials, certain days, certain hours. It's really easy to decide and then coast in forces it. And you get to see every transaction the moment it happens. No more end of the month surprises. If someone tries to fill up outside their limit or at the wrong time, you'll know instantly. And they have really great fraud protection,

which is incredibly important. I had to close an account today that was open for me last night because someone had my information. So fraud protections becoming more and more important over time. And you're not going to have shared pins or missing receipts. No guessing of what employees are doing. Coast verifies the purchases and you stay in control. So right now, Coast Pay is offering our listeners up to $2,000 in credit when you get started at coastpay.com/clah. Go to coastpay.com/clah

to see how you can earn up to $2,000 credit. Terms apply. That's coastpay.com/clah. The coast visa commercial credit card is issued by Celtic Bank, all card accounts subject credit approval. Okay, so like I mentioned, a lot changed this week when it comes to snow efforts. And when I say that, I just mean something unprecedented happened. This doesn't change how we actually

look at the species. This is a crazy thing. And like the first time it's ever happened in

really in recorded history. And we'll get into that a little bit too. If I want to tell the story

“and I think it's very interesting and imagine again, if I say anything wrong, please jump in.”

Okay, so there are a ton of details from this particular story. I did read a ton of articles and it was kind of what you typically see with something like this where all the articles are kind of regurgitating the same information. So I think I have most of everything that's out there unless something just came out in the last, you know, nine or 10 hours. But basically the setup for this is this happened in Xinjiang, which is in the weager 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. And you do that cool thing where you put a foot in the hand in each of the four countries, like down there. There's got to be one spot where you can do, right? I think that's to it. 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,”

in a part of China. Okay. Probably 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 that. That's zero of those countries or 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 why color tell us that? That movie could have used a snow leopard. Yeah.

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 Kotokay town and she was driving back to her hotel and as she was doing this, something caught her eye. A group of people were near the side of the road pointing excitedly at an animal in the snow and she pulled her car over and enthusiastically joined them. And you know what? I would have done the same because the animal that they were looking at is often called the ghost of the mountains because it is so hard to find

in the wild. It was a snow leopard and it was right off the road right next to town which is truly a once in a lifetime kind of sighting. But for whatever reason, this particular skier wasn't

happy with the distance between her and the snow leopard and she did something people in Yellowstone

and Glacier and other wildlife hotspots around the world do pretty much on a daily basis which is she decided to get closer than she should to take a better photo on her phone. Reportedly a selfie. No, but I'm not going to say that with any conviction. I will to 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,

story 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 jackets

like slightly different colored and stuff. And she's like on a slope and then with the attacking her it's flat. Yeah, and it's like also 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 be looking at her. So that's something else. It's another close. It should teach these

“snow lepers to do while you're out there, Jeff. Yeah, Jeff. How many fingers did that selfie?”

How many fingers did the leopard have in that selfie? Was that the camera see it? It's feet right now. See here's the problem with that though. So say I meet someone out in just in real life. They people have six fingers sometimes. Like the guy. Sure. Princess bride. Yeah. Cats. That's do that. That's going to be confusing for a guy like what I have a conspiracy theory with that to that. I think at the start of the AI stuff, they were doing messing up the hands on purpose so that

we would be like okay at least we can tell what AI is and then once they got it in everything now they're they can really put 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. You have it. Look yeah like at a glance I could see why anyone would fall for that. Right. But I hate it. You

remember how you category we haven't done in forever like best Instagram shot of the of the story.

“Like I think this story is an all-time contender. Like she probably got the best shot. She probably”

has a great selfie on her phone. Like you see was taking a video while it came after it. Oh that's that. Pretty good content. You can pay to get that out of me. Yes. Everyone has a price. Like that's probably true. Stuff time. It takes like two boxes of milk duds for anything to be gotten out of me. I'm a summer is watermelon like an ice 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 back. I'm so ashamed to wear a helmet. There's no place to helmet wouldn't well maybe like there's no. Maybe especially bedtime things get pretty

rocky sometime. A shark it feels a little bit like or a chimpanzee just rip your nuts off. Imaging. I'm curious what snow leopard 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 throw or back of the neck? Yeah, fantastic. Either one. Okay. Depends on where they're coming from. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know exactly what her injuries were. But this is where the video of the encounter actually starts. We see her lying face down on the ground with the snow leopard sitting over

if this was actually a defensive thing, if she got too close in a detector, potentially the snow leopard had decided that opportunistically it might feed on her. I don't know. Imaging 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. 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 really confused by the situation. Like it's a high stress situation. It's a typical prey, but it's warm blooded and it's bleeding. And so if I bite you, you know, if bit, why not dead? Kind of, yeah, you know, thought process maybe. And so I, I don't know, I think it might be like a young inexperienced animal that's indebted 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 sure. Or is it like, you know, I don't really ever eat beats. But sometimes people will just put a thing, a plate of beats in front of me. And if it's just right there,

maybe I might eat it. That chance is, you never. Sure. Yeah. You think you need friends.

Opportunistic eating. Yeah. What about? So Jeffrey Dommer might have been thinking that same thing. Like, I killed this thing. Yes. Might as well be. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. If I could, we work both of them in. I would done what the blue sheep and like, I bet, since stuff do and just jumped off. Run really. Yeah. Oh, man. We're going to get to that. Imagine 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 imaging is Jeffrey Dommer, right? Sure. That's going to be a hard one. That's like one A one be killed in prison. Yeah. He was killed. Okay. Oh, how's he? Yeah. Yeah. He was killed. Just a ounce. 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 the hospital and what do you think is surprising like it is kind of sitting on there and eating it. I don't know if it was eating her, but it to me felt like it did a lot of damage from the amount of blood that was coming down and it's not what I would have expected or like a quick defense of attack. What do you

“think, Jim and Jean? I think it may be. 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 what she's 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 wounds just like you bleed like a stockpick. So yeah, I think it could go either way. But assuming, I mean,

she just like laid down in the snow. You know, yeah, snow makes it. That's what that's what my thought process was was like if this was defensive and she immediately kind of fell to me to have that much blood means that the leopard continued mulling 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, I retract. Well, I know. I do still agree with you, though. Like it's, I think it's definitely like a situation where I don't know if you like bitter twice scratch or a couple times obviously these are like really, you know, bleed heavy areas. I don't know what the, 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”

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 guy that almost infuses you. You got away. The guy that almost got away from Jeffrey Dawn. Yeah, it's kind of weird. Jeffrey Dawn should have sat on him. We should we just do it. Don't mind it. No, I think I'm like, I'm not trying to make it seem like, oh, that's wrong. But like, I think I just went through a similar

thing where 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 enough. Yeah.

Basically, going back to this girl's injuries, we haven't gotten any photos of him yet. Hopefully

let's, I mean, let's write a paper on this to get her. I'd be down to that. Okay. But

“at the end of the video, the other thing that I think is really interesting is you can see the 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 in a 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 imaging. 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 of you approach a snow leopard this closely. It's not its fault if it decides to all you. I can't blame a snow leopard for being a snow leopard. Yeah, but this one's acting outside

a 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 at a 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 got rolled and ran off. And like a guy that caught one from a horse by the tail 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

rabbit snow leopard and two guys in Kazakistan. I'm saying that wrong. Kazakistan. Kazakistan. Sorry,

Kazakistan. 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 imaging. 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 leopard lives side by side. I feel like maybe that 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 into 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 Kurdistan. And that means I've worked with a lot of like local communities and herders. And in China in particular, so we spend 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 and you stay with the locals and you're able to come see the wild life and you're almost guaranteed to see a cat. So I wonder 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 leopard's like we're talking about, you know, why was the the woman able to get so close to the snow leopard? That's because honestly, in all of the anecdotal evidence I've heard, cat, these snow leopard are just very unbothered by people. Then 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

parts of snow leopard range, due to their protection and we'll get into that in a second, but

some of the anecdotal stuff has to do with people, people, always initiating that contact,

trying to get a little bit too close. And then the cats will usually freeze a little bit and then they end up feeling a little bit cornered. And so there's like some hissing and maybe some striking going out. But I've only heard of like two anecdotal incidences from that. But again, it's always initiated by a person pushing their luck. Well, the one we saw, watched me poop behind like 30 rocks and it was unbothered by that. So I guess they aren't just pretty unbothered by people. They are.

I watched a snow leopard throw up in China and I have footage of it. That's great. I don't, I mean, I wonder if a snow leopard has footage of U.S. It definitely had a great view of me having a pretty serious diarrhea problem on one of the best days of my life. Oh, you know, up and down. Yeah. My cat toad is an indoor cat. We don't want them outside killing our native birds or wildlife. We also don't want our native wildlife killing him.

So because he spends all this time indoors, we want to make sure that we make it as wonderful

“and as happy as it possibly can be. And that's why I want to tell you guys about smalls. Smalls”

is fresh protein rich meals that support cat health and happiness. And that's really important to me because I want to be living as happiest possible life. Starting with smalls is really easy. You just share info about your cat's diet, their health, their food preferences. And then smalls puts together a personalized sampler just for your cat. No more picking between random brands of the store. Smalls has the right food to satisfy any cat's cravings. And guess what?

Cats.com. The cats.com name smalls. They're best overall cat food. And I have to agree because Tode absolutely loves it. He just eats it right up every time we give it to him. And he's so happy.

And something I've noticed is when people come over and they talk about Tode, they always say,

"Oh, he's such a beautiful cat. He looks so good. Why is this first of shiny?" And I truly think it's because of the food that we feed him. With smalls, he's getting really good,

“really healthy, protein rich meals. And I do think it helps his coat look shinier. I think it”

gives him better energy. And the most important thing to me personally is I just know that he's happier. And I want my cat to be happy. We only have him for so long and I need him to have a happy good life. So make 26 year cats healthiest and happiest year yet. Take advantage of their new year special and get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you had to smalls.com/tooth. If I was one of the animals in our stories like say a lion or a bear, I think I would especially like

our sponsors over at Butcherbox. Like think about it, a lion will kill a wilderness and have to chew on it for like 10 hours. Meanwhile Butcherbox sends me the best cuts from healthy cows straight to my door. I love getting premium cuts of steak that are responsible and sustainable delivered straight to my door. This last box I got a bunch of steaks. Some sirloin and prime rib. I love just having a thought steak that when I don't know what to eat, I can just eat a steak.

It's the best. Also with their chicken strips, I'm really picky about chicken. I don't like having too much fat. I like lean chicken and there's it's so good. It's perfect. I put it in my air fryer. Then I get some buffalo sauce, maybe a little cheese on top of it, and it's delicious. For a very decade Butcherbox has led the industry with meat and seafood that's antibiotic free, hormone free, and independently verified. It's clean, trustworthy, protein. You want to be eating

especially at the start of a new year. As an exclusive offer, new listeners can get their choice between organic ground beef, chicken breasts, or ground turkey in every box for a year. Plus $20 off when you go to butcherbox.com/tooth. That's right. Your choice of organic ground beef,

chicken breasts, or ground turkey in every box for a year. Plus $20 off your first box and free shipping

all these. That's butcherbox.com/tooth. Don't forget, please, to use our link so that they know that we sent you. Well, if you guys are ready, then we'll move on from this attack story and we'll let Imaging teach us a little bit about basic 101 with snow leopards. I'm surprised Mike doesn't have any more diarrhea questions, but I can't have enough. I just don't have enough first hand experience with this. Yeah, we need to teach you. All right. Go ahead Imaging, let's hear a little

“bit about snow leopard biology. Okay, so I think it's always important to start from the top”

in terms of their evolutionary history. And so one of the craziest things about snow leopards is that their closest living relative is the tiger. So again, so back up, Pantera is the genus of

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, 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-livation mountains in

India, Nepal, Bhutan. And 60% of their range is in China. They are, they are keen, they are

evolutionarily adapted to high-livation. 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. And I think it'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 process

“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, but that's crazy. I have been at fifths almost 16,000 feet and like you need to take medication. I mean what did you guys take the preventative medication like every day? I didn't and I really should have is what I've determined. I also we got to to Ladakh in India and we were supposed to be like

a climatizing and getting used to the elevation and then they spotted a links and it was at like 15 and a half thousand feet and they're just like let's go for it and so we just like rushed

“up there and we had two people in our trip that ended up getting altitude sickness. So yeah it was”

it was maybe a little bit too much too quick for us but we did get to see your region links which was cool. I have not seen a region. I've picked up a lot of your region links, scat or poop. I'm really good at that. Better than snow leopards unfortunately but I haven't actually seen a live one so what does it mean to be good at? You're like good at spotting it, good at handling it? Yeah so all of my region get up. So from a biology perspective like you can

often tell what animal pooped by the way that it looks and so there's some characteristic signs that distinguish like cat poop from a myriad of other species and so like where we were searching for snow leopards. Scat like we're looking for we're going places where we think the cats are going to leave leave a scent marks and so like that's the top of ridges, a lawn big rocks and volters and picking up things but because cats are similar in areas where like your Asian links and

snow leopards are they're often you know it's hard to tell just because one is big does 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 the syrup. 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 that's one outdated or one train of thought is that if it's a if it can roar that makes it a big cat and the one thing which is 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 a fleck the flexibility of the high-oid 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

not 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 it's no leopard a smaller than both of them okay yeah snow leopards are a little bit smaller than mountain lions well I mean the cheetah's taller in terms of where they might be a little bit closer to being in the same weight class yeah obviously height the the cheetah would be a little bit taller

snow leopard fluffy fluffy they are very fluffy they have they look bigger than they probably actually are yeah that's true it's like a healthy male could be around like 90 pounds okay a few males I can around 50 yeah why don't you tell us more about like all we have to

“physiology count our hair when we we ourselves I think they should have to turn up”

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 that 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's running across you know flat land in the serengette 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 it really really fast speed 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 carining, carining downhill when they are hunting but because also they live in really snow

“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 leopard's using their tail as a scarf because their tails are the full length of their bodies they can like wrap it kind of around them like they'll settle down

and they'll they'll wrap their their tails up around their faces no way that's incredible it's

very cute that's the cutest fact I've heard in a long while it is very cute and their feet also so you know Canada links is a small cat that has like very snow shoe like feet because they live in snow environments the whole body of a snow leopard is adapted to snow so obviously I've already talked about the gene I've talked about the tail but also their feet are very very spread out in large and it allows them to be on top of the snow without sinking and 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 it's not adapted it's like they literally have built in snow shoes that's cool it's really cool I I think my favorite thing about snow leopard's though has to do with their 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 all right I guess I don't know about her about reptiles but in the case of mammals all mammals share this this common fact because are those teeth are designed for shredding meat and obviously

“our large carnivores are 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's serve 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 carining down a mountain you have increased opportunity for having those teeth break off from an evolutionary standpoint it seems that the snow leopard has evolved that totally round to canine because that creates total symmetry of pressure when that tooth is being yanked on from all different angles as they're literally carining down a mountain that's and I think that is just

like the most fascinating like example of evolutionary adaptations because no other cat has that 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 learned to in India they kill yak pretty regularly from these

different like herds men which is 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 it's it's prey but uh I was pretty impressed that the snow leopard it almost got it but the ibex it did yeah that was really awesome and that's something about snow leopard i mean i think any carnivore um this is the case like they you know

have like a less than 25% success rate so in a lot of cases cats like they're only successful

“one in ten times when they're hunting and so but every single time they're hunting they have to go like”

you know like balls out like hundred 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 with us 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 in thin god they don't have clavicles that cat you know because otherwise like i don't think they would ever be able to walk yeah yeah from those

interesting are do they have any natural predators themselves is there anything that's going after them where they're living or 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 leperds and snow leperds and in some cases

with tigers and snow leperds um 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 mean brown bears are like absolutely horrifying um cool but absolutely horrifying they kill everything and so you know if a snow leopard in a brown bear were to come into contact yeah that that would be an example for they're not like top of the food chain or wolves maybe a pack of wolves but it seems like they are able to get away from most of these animals um yeah it's about like a spatial

“temporal avoidance like they might exist in the same space but i think they”

snow leperds tend to like go all the way to the top of the ridge um and actually have a friend who did his PhD on like they were he was looking at spatial partitioning between like wolves and snow leperds that were kind of in the same area and it seems like like wolves tend to stay at a slightly lower elevation than snow leperds just a 41 another yeah cool well what else what else you got for us i want to learn more about them so snow leperds like i was saying like they're

hunting pretty much all the time right because i'm not eating super often they're not successful super often snow leperds uh despite being larger body animals and being capable of taking larger species like marker or ibex one of their favorite prey items especially in the summer are marmets which is a like a groundhog it's a large bodied rodent that is like all fat um and snow leperds 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 um”

you know like most rodents they're kind of like one of the alarm systems of if wildlife is around or for predators around and so a lot of the times that we were spending in in China we often are like using marmets as as a helpful calling tool to see if there might be like a predator around like a snow leperds interesting yeah and the few times that we've seen and and i work and talk about this

in a little bit but the few times that i have seen snow leperds hunting uh in China it was always it was

both times it was lactating females so it's like in summer months the females have cubs on the ground the cubs are small enough that they're still in the den but she's really needing to like maximize that caloric intake and and you know marmets are like a smaller return in a way compared to something big like an ibex but it's certainly less dangerous um and apparently they're very tasty yeah i've never eaten one but they never eaten one um can you go into then we've we keep kind of alluding to it and

hitting 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 leperds is that white coat with the like grayish, ready brown colored rosettes blends in

110% perfectly with their environment and so yeah what's amazing is like reddit posts of snow leperds 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 think that like you zone in only eyes looking

right at you but that's just never the case and so i i definitely say 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 um methodology certainly they are using elevation to their advantage um 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 maximize that landscape that elevation anyway that they can

you've got like grazing blue sheep there's often not a lot of to put like there's 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 and a lot of cases there's going to be nothing because that's where their prey feels safe because if they have like a wide vantage point how can anything sneak up on you and that's where that that that that pelage that coat color comes in

“is so fascinating um and just like any other carnivore but especially cats like i think cats”

from an evolutionary standpoint are the most interesting of the predators because they're just so adapted to move in the most silent slow way compared to other species that enables them to like literally just walk across green grass and you don't see them until they have exploded into motion and they're truly ambushing i've 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 onto something but it it it was like

a very unique attack on that girl i think that this selfie might be why it attacked her because they are ambush predators so maybe having her back to it and not facing it gave them that instinct of 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 right 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 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 too to someone just taking an unsolicited photo of you you don't know what they're gonna do with that picture you said that's crazy you 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 in the tiger are most closely related of these cats you said so did their common ancestor because they have stripes one has stripes one has spots and like the obvious comparison is just clouded leopard or just your bog standard leopard i'm not a cat person yeah common 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

leopard's 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 they're

“i think the first um documented case of a snow leopard ancestor is in a cave in afghanistan”

and they know it's a snow leopard from genetic assessment but um that's really ancient DNA and so i don't think that we we don't have the i don't think the genetic markers are there to determine what did this animal look like in terms of its coat coloration or its coat pattern um so i don't think that that answer at least to my knowledge answer is not like available to modern science but in terms of like evolution um when we think about a species proliferating like a

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 panjaya 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 that far predates like this particular example and so the ancestor of all the big cats originated somewhere in africa

and those species were able to then migrate to what is now North America to what is now South America to parts of Asia um 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 um 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 becoming tigers are in lower elevation warmer 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 um you know like in the sunderbonds and they turned you know despite being orange they actually blended in with that environment and then what became the snow leopard just happened to be successful

at this really really high elevation um then you start to get into things like climate

but it's kind of like yeah like polar bears that turned white and learned how to hunt seals

were once a brown bear so it's just you know uh yeah that's great and said yeah habitat can really just learn a hundred things it feels like you know sorry I feel like I was like really really nerdy now I know you've managed to teach Mike something which is something I've been trying to do for a long time they won't listen to me imageine he just won't why should I well you know we're getting to where we probably should move on to our categories here pretty soon

but are there any other um like really interesting tidbits that you wanted to drop before we do that

“so I think that some of the coolest things about snow leopards have to do with sort of the”

snow leopard but also just the way that people live alongside wildlife like I had hinted at earlier

you know snow leopards are protected in most of their range countries but I feel like china um 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 co-exist with people in parts of the world if they're

allowed to and so I feel very strongly that like you know one of the reasons that we don't see a lot of incidences of snow leopards attacking humans yes is because they live in really rugged environments that are difficult for people to get to but it's also because the places where they do co-exist 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 um I've been digging

in a 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 to have different mythology about this animal but the thing that you're talking about that you know this kind of brings it up is that a lot of these cultures are Buddhist cultures where taking life for no reason is considered sinful you know it's considered wrong and especially an animal like a snow leopard that it

already is like the protector of the mountains the ghost of the mountains you know these noble spirits often that are there to protect these communities their religion kind of shuns

“that behavior too so that I think is part of it as well that there's this innate respect for wildlife”

and that's part of theology and mythology to a lot of these communities too yeah and it does extend to other species is a snow leopard seemed to have like the highest place of tolerance from that spiritual 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 yeah it's I mean some of the villages that I worked with you know in it's particularly in China it was pretty common place 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 they're you know their sheep up into the mountains and you know surprise it's a brown bear and you know there

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 Permafros 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 eye backs like surrounded by flowers and then also like on her hands I think a tattoo of a snow leopard which is pretty sweet yeah yeah this episode is brought to you by Remi so when Jeff West and I first started hanging out inevitably things led to a little bit of a slumber party and that's when I learned something

pretty concerning about myself the next morning they told me that they heard me making sounds with

my teeth that they'd never heard before I was grinding as clenching and it was just making a horrible

“horrible noise that's why this year I'm using Remi if you're part of the 30% of Americans who”

grind their teeth then your smile needs protection too make it your year by grabbing your own night guard Remi's custom night guards are clinically tested and FDA cleared to prevent teeth grinding reduced jaw tension and facial muscle strain and improved sleep quality you'll get the same

much more convenient than having to go into the dentist's office so here's how it works you'll receive your impression kit delivered straight to your door you'll follow Remi's step-by-step instructions to get your perfect impression then Remi will craft and ship you your custom fit night guard get your night guard back and start protecting your teeth start the new year right and use code tooth to get 50% off your purchase of a new night guard that's 50% off at shop r-e-m-i dot com slash

tooth with code tooth thank you Remi for sponsoring this episode this episode is brought to you by element electrolyte deficiencyer imbalance can cause headaches cramps fatigue brain fog and weakness

basically you're just living life on hard mode and you feel the difference when you get it right

but what is element it's a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix and sparkling electrolyte drink born from the growing body of research revealing that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels two to three times government recommendations so you might be getting enough water but it's the electrolytes you're missing out on and it's not just professional podcasters who need optimal hydration levels we hear tooth and claw we believe in it we love this stuff but it's

not just us it's professional athletes it's Olympic athletes it's special forces in the military basically everyone can improve their lives with just a little bit of a smarter hydration strategy so get your free eight count sample pack of elements most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase that drink element dot com slash tooth find your favorite element flavor or share with a friend and you can try it totally risk free if you don't like it you can give it away to a friend

you'll get your money back no questions asked and they want us to say hardly anyone does that everyone keeps this stuff we hear tooth and claw we love it so get your free eight count sample pack with any purchase at drink element dot com slash tooth 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 yes do it all right first and foremost your favorite snow leopard from pop culture

and we'll all answer this one imaging 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 leopard 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. I did watch Zootopia many years ago and it came out I think it's a very cute movie there is a snow leopard in that movie who plays an anchor

anchor and her name is Fabian Fabian Growley which I think is very funny but the only of sorry this is a multifaceted answer the other thing I will say however and it was the shock of my life I was

not expecting in the first five minutes of the documentary tiger king for there to be a snow leopard

in the back of someone's van in 105 degree weather in a dog kennel yeah so I didn't like that but it led to some really great conversation about not having a snow leopard as a pet those are my answers we need more snow leopard to pop the roll out of them and you hogged them. Sorry not the night thought of any of those but yeah can't cut any of what I just said because I said it all yeah I 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 I'm a really good villain what's his name again you're probably going to tie a

“tie long I think tie a song yeah he's so open kung fu and it's not an extreme that plays”

him great voice secret life a walk their midi yeah when they go up into the afghan or i rack mountains i forget what you think it's afghan yeah afghan mountains and then rock yeah that makes sense uh it's shon pen right is the photographer and he like finally meets up with them and he's like you're gonna take the picture and then he's like sometimes I just live in the moment and don't and is just watching it and I thought it I liked that movie a lot and I thought that was like a really

good moment in it yeah I couldn't remember any so I did some researching too and I came across so this isn't a leopard snow leopard character but I did come across a little tidbit someone on the special effects team of the first avatar movie maybe the subsequent ones as well said that they modeled the the navi the blue alien species eyeballs off of snow leopard eyes and I didn't do any cross referencing to check how accurate that statement was I just took it on good faith that this

guy knew what he was talking about and that this is a true fact so there you go that was mine too

“they changed them to yellow because snow leopard eyeballs are a much greater and honestly imaging”

convinced me they have the prettiest eyeballs of any big cat and I watched a documentary prepping for

it was a dark eyeball and then it like glowed and as 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 there might now my favorite big cat eyeball but Jeff's got a very clear spell out that yeah what's on my face I just want my favorite cat eyes light up a lot engine but I wasn't gonna say you think 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 light up have you I mean but have you noticed how different cat well I mean cat eyes are very cool but

they're not as weird as goat eyes. Oh with the goat's have square pupils. Yeah yeah go tell

“it. Which is a little less ethereal. Yeah it's satanic right that's why we're in the opposite direction”

on that point. All right this this snow leopard that we talked about 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. In possible to just at least not shout out the greatest action movie ever made hard-boiled especially the warehouse scene when tally on fat swings down on a rope and has a man that anyone who hasn't seen it I urge you strongly but

I'm gonna 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 a lot of bodies

“and titanic that's true that's the true villain. That's a great pick the iceberg from titanic”

huge body. For the mummy. Really deep on the internet you could give it to J.P. Morgan for the titanic. True who is the villain what is a villain this another philosophical questions on her screening of titanic. Jeff what do you got? I mean 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 that fishman

island and he's like they have 100,000 people who are gonna 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. You got to get there Wes. We'll see. Please. Okay. Yeah. I picked um I actually I was going to pick

“the prison scene from the raid too but the one I ended up on is actually the ending scene of”

Rogue One where Darth Vader shows up and you just see him go through that hallway and you know me I'm like a big and/or Rogue One fan now and that scene where he's just like throw in dudes and hacken them down and everything and his lightsaber lights up and lights up the hallway it's just like peak star wars for me. So I really that's the one I picked. Okay Imaging I want you to briefly tell us your favorite snow leopard experience you've ever had. It's a toss-up

between the same snow leopard that I saw twice in China um we were uh so the first time that I saw

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 it's totally you know just steep mountain edge and it was covered in snow is very quiet beautiful and we're driving along looking to see if there's

any signs of any animals and um 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 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 leopard it was a small herd there were like maybe 40 animals and as she you know she had gotten she's gotten down the mountain about 15 feet in I don't

scattered and 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 in the snow leopard disappeared she did not have anything in her”

mouth and then I watched we watched her skulk through the snow from like lower below the sheep she was above them charged down charged through them and then was now below them and then she's 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 well it was so fascinating about this is that you know this is remote wilderness but there did happen to be just out of like within like 100 feet of

this there was a cattle fence that was there and she literally used that fence to her advantage to try to split the herd and then charged again but this time uphill she was not successful she wasn't successful but then she crawled under the fence and moved over to this boulder and sat down because she was panting out of breath and we were about a hundred meters away like a small river you know

“separating us like we were there was no chance we were ever gonna 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 that we're just you know but humans like it's for a snow leopard too I mean that's close yeah it is and she just stared at us and then just plopped down on a rock and we just watched her for like 30 minutes

that's amazing and then a couple two weeks later in this on the exact same slope we were back

and we are pretty confident 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 her pressure 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 marments 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 marments started alarm calling 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 decided to park in front of this like scar in the mountain that wasn't green and grassy and I was watching all these marments 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 forty feet of these marments but she just exploded down the mountain and threw herself into a marmet hole and again came up empty um and then again turned around and looked at us and then just huffed and walked away it was like both of you watch those are the coolest

stories of my I've ever experienced in my entire life we watched one flopped down on a rock for 13

hours and I'll never be able to get to it so that's amazing we watched it flopped down behind a rock

for it yeah 10 hours most of the time it was out visible but I don't come out of it that way I would say majority of time it wasn't visible what's really 50 50 outside of snow leopards what's your favorite animal imaging hmm I hate to be stereotypical but I'm gonna stay in the in the wild cat family I um I'm a big fan of bobcats north the bobcat is one of the coolest critters in the world I love me a me so carnivore sure the little dudes um so we I've done a lot of live trapping

with bobcats for research like catch and release like we anesthetize them and it is terrifying the sounds that they can make and the moves they can do when there are any tiny little box traps they are the toughest most ordinary creatures I've ever encountered and I just love them for it when you said hate to be stereotypical I thought I was going to be like horse a dog I thought you could take one in a fight hmm abs now without a weapon are you kidding me like if

if a bobcat got a hold of any part of your bug 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 thought a lot about this I feel like an easy answer would be a large bird but you I feel like that's too easy so assume that you're willing to accept some scratches a large bird or we talking here I mean I feel like I could I mean I have seen lamer gyrs and 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

hair and 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 can probably step be to though even if you lost your eyeballs you could still be for maybe that okay maybe that's

“that's possible I mean I think about like how I exist in the world when I don't have my contacts”

in and I'm utterly useless and so if I lost an eye I might just like lie down pee myself and and just that's it the bird's gonna pack me to death I just die you know I mean if they're keep pecking you know what I mean yeah what about like a Galapagos tortoise like five hundred pounds just feel like if you could if you could lift it just flip it over like a tire or something

or maybe just like move away Ted yeah or maybe just walk away a Galapagos tortoise is a great answer

that's like probably the heaviest animal the animal said yeah it feels like cheating only because it's really good logic you said biggest animal and that's a big one yeah he thought of it though so I think Jeff gets the metal there yeah that's Bobcat wins Bobcat would be really hard to fight too because I just spend the entire fight wanting to pinch its cheeks they've got probably the most pinchable cheeks in the animal kingdom right yeah it's not friend why friend shaped

yeah exactly ask myself that every day wait what about you for me yeah I Jeff I can't beat Jeff's

“answer but I think outside of that the the answer I always give is like a white tail deer I think”

like there there's a decent chance that it'd be me but I think that's one that I can go up against and like pulled the ground and hold down and maybe you know punch enough to where I can knock it out this is a bug or a dough a dough I'm not I don't want it yeah but there's a chance that it can beat me still they got razor sharp hooves they messed it up but that would probably be if I had to pick one outside of a Galapagos tortoise all right so another question for you imaging

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 you 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 fausa which is a carnivore that's native to Madagascar I'm a big fan of the miscelleds like the weasel family and fauses are not in the weasel family they are not in the

vibarid family and the you know weasel makes sense right like we all know probably what a weasel is but vibarids and weasels are all very they call them phila form carnivores mean phila like as in cat they're cat like carnivores and the fausa the fausa 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 what I was great answers is cake and ice cream one dessert or two desserts wait say it again cake is cake and ice cream one dessert

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 dessert well if you had a dessert or two okay yeah this is a new answer I guess we should allow her to have a lot of things 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 but that's why I would never choose”

ice cream cake where people are like just a ice cream cake to 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 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 not real yeah you don't like so I don't it's not a dessert don't it's just breakfast okay so like if 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 philosophies is a hot dog 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 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 time I'm going to have to come back to this I'm going to have to think about this and and post about it online okay I'm like for people that care to follow up on whether or not

imaging thinks it's one or two things it's not a dessert this is such a good toy to get more followers right now wait why is it not a dessert because you said it's no you said oh yeah I think that's it because it's not good I like that answer we're just gonna accept that it's locked in all right another question to think about then I'm going to make you answer this one do you 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 hmm are they limited to if there is ice present

but does that mean like I can make a tree or I can move a tree like can I spend the tree or they find okay with three powers like in my true estimation you can you create fruit you can shoot like roots and branches at things kind of picture group 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 survival like if I can make a tree y can I make a tree that has fruit on it's I'm

“probably gonna go with tree powers yeah I think tree powers is the most useful for yourself and”

others what can't she do really powers Jeff what's the big one the kiss yeah I think a cold kiss with ice powers is like pretty cool like you can focus someone and have ice powers like in the X man that's cool and like you can slide everywhere you go that's true it's a prize you're frozen if you're popsicles melting in like the dog days of summer you could just keep that thing frozen you wouldn't have to let it trip it down on your fingers that's a big one maybe you would improve ice

cream cake tree powers answer that's 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 these cats we have left in the wild we think there anywhere from 7000 to 10000 great that's higher than than like what it said you know 10 years ago

“so it does seem like they're on they're doing better than they were recently is that yes they were”

upless is it I feel like it's a debate is it uplifting so they were listed as endangered up until red red list assessment through the IUCN in 2017 my actually my PhD advisor was on that assessment team where they were trying to determine what the numbers were range-wide and because we have more information they no longer met that minimum number criteria to be listed as endangered so they were moved from an endangered status to a vulnerable status I don't know that means they were uplisted

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 the main threats that we're seeing these days with with snow upwards so climate change is a big one that's a vaguen but it is still a big one because when you live on the roof of the world and you have

“shrinking and 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 were a snow over 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 um 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 these stakeholders these ranchers and herders and everything and really convinced them. A that the animals are worth more alive and b that you know there's really not that many of them and we need them to be involved in that process. So yeah and we touched on that we already touched on that a little bit but like some of these different non-profit 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're 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 and any of those 12 countries are all 12 they're like doing pretty well. They do have different uh different issues in different parts of their range

might be maybe a hundred there and there don't seem to be a whole lot of cats in bouton so from a

numbers perspective um that is just a natural a natural variation China has like 60% of snow leopard range so in theory 60% of the world's 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'm going”

to be careful so don't get in trouble here but I think the Chinese government is leading a lot of the like minerals mining in parts of kirkistan which is you can stand 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 um the water sorry the the the free water in central Asia that overlaps the snow leopard habitat feeds about a billion of the world's people

and it's crazy and so it's really you know their habitats incredibly important so like snow leopards and people are inextricably linked in a myriad of different ways cool our last our last category uh this is a new animal for us that we've dedicated an episode too

so we always give a claw rating uh for those animals so on a scale of zero to 10 claws you're

going to rank how much you like snow leopards and I'll go ahead and go first I they're 10 clients I'm all for me I they 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 just I don't think I've ever been so transfixed so quickly by an animal and I just absolutely think they're gorgeous wonderful cats so they're 10 for me we can keep being friends yeah I'm gonna have to

give it a nine just on the fact yeah we're just coming friends too so I count seven big cats and I think they're the hardest animals to rank and I just don't think I want to give all cats a 10 out of 10 for all seven cats I mean is like a little bit like I don't know so that's why I'm giving it a nine and only that reason I think they deserve a 10 I'm giving them a nine because they're like top there there's four other big cats I like more than okay I think that's

true that's fair they're all great cats yeah they're they're nine clients for me just because I try to limit myself to only having 10 10 clients like my top 10 are the only ones that are going to have 10 claws but 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

I that's a weird way I think very highly of this animal I think they're awesome and obviously incredibly beautiful and charismatic and just like like what's was saying pretty transfixing with their eyes and their big fluffy paws and everything so nine claws where I'm landing with them as

well in a jingle 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 stereotype so that's why I said I wouldn't want to be stereotypical”

right because the stereotype is 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 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 I saw you think about that lesson we can we can go ahead ahead on this I know bears are pretty cool that would 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 given them nine claws out of ten

“it's close all right well we really appreciate you joining us imaging if you want to learn more”

from imaging or 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

that we were finally able to do this it's a great podcast I have you know so many friends you guys

“have a lot of fans in the forest service down in the bitter root as a side note my husband Mark”

is always apparently his field crew is always listening to you guys and so he's always coming home

and telling me stuff and so I'm just yeah super stoked to be able to be here and I like this

“stuff that you guys do so yeah thanks a lot it's been fun shout out thank you for service yeah”

all right thank you thank you love you everyone love you guys bye see ya bye