File:The endangered Snow Leopard (13310647514).jpg

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Original file(1,000 × 952 pixels, file size: 580 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Captions

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents

Summary

[edit]
Description

These rare, beautiful grey leopards live in the mountains of Central Asia. They are insulated by thick hair, and their wide, fur-covered feet act as natural snowshoes. Snow leopards have powerful legs and are tremendous leapers, able to jump as far as 50 feet (15 meters). They use their long tails for balance and as blankets to cover sensitive body parts against the severe mountain chill.

Snow leopards prey upon the blue sheep (bharal) of Tibet and the Himalaya, as well as the mountain ibex found over most of the rest of their range. Though these powerful predators can kill animals three times their weight, they also eat smaller fare, such as marmots, hares, and game birds.

One Indian snow leopard, protected and observed in a national park, is reported to have consumed five blue sheep, nine Tibetan woolly hares, twenty-five marmots, five domestic goats, one domestic sheep, and fifteen birds in a single year.

As these numbers indicate, snow leopards sometimes have a taste for domestic animals, which has led to killings of the big cats by herders.

These endangered cats appear to be in dramatic decline because of such killings, and due to poaching driven by illegal trades in pelts and in body parts used for traditional Chinese medicine. Vanishing habitat and the decline of the cats' large mammal prey are also contributing factors
Date
Source The endangered Snow Leopard
Author Steve Wilson - over 6 million views Thanks !! from Chester, UK

Licensing

[edit]
w:en:Creative Commons
attribution
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
You are free:
  • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
  • attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
This image was originally posted to Flickr by Steve Wilson - over 6 million views Thanks !! at https://www.flickr.com/photos/26811962@N05/13310647514. It was reviewed on 29 May 2015 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

29 May 2015

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current19:47, 29 May 2015Thumbnail for version as of 19:47, 29 May 20151,000 × 952 (580 KB)Wilfredor (talk | contribs)Transferred from Flickr via Flickr2Commons

There are no pages that use this file.

Metadata