TIL what snow leopards sound like. I didn't know what I expected, but that wasn't it.
imgur.com
Who knew that a 90 pound apex predator sounds like a gently squeezed squeaky toy?
Direct link in case the video doesn't load: https://imgur.com/tErMOz9 (sound on, of course.)
I knew that had to be a baby.
He's an adult in the wild: https://youtu.be/jZEnbCTI1o0
Yeah, hardly a squeaky toy, is it. At least not of the traditional kind.
Imagine hearing that next to your tent in the middle of the night.
Adorable and frightening considering that thing could rip out your throat.
They can also eat your face.
Not my face though!
https://biologydictionary.net/snow-leopard/
Snow leopards are apex predators, which means that they sit at the top of the food chain and have no natural predators themselves.
On the other hand, that's "natural" predators, which explicitly excludes humans. We have our own unique tier in the chain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_leopard
The snow leopard is easily driven away from livestock and readily abandons kills, often without defending itself.[31] Only two attacks on humans have been reported, both near Almaty in Kazakhstan, and neither were fatal. In 1940, a rabid snow leopard attacked two men; and an old, toothless emaciated individual attacked a person passing by.[53][54]
Hundreds of endangered wild snow leopards are killed each year
As many as 450 endangered snow leopards have been killed each year since 2008, a report on the fate of the mountain cats estimates.
A big surprise is that more than half the killings – 55 per cent – are estimated to be done by herders avenging livestock attacks by leopards, with only 21 per cent of the cats taken by poachers.
Only 4000 to 7000 of the animals are thought to remain in the 12 mountainous Asian countries they inhabit.
That is, we annually kill something like 3%-10% of the global snow leopard population. They have never been known to kill a human, and have very rarely attacked one.
Sounds like a hawk or eagle ... which kind of makes sense since they are originally from the Central Asian mountains where a lot of these birds also live
If I heard that cat sound in the mountains, I would just think it was a bird instead of a cat
I'd even possibly mistake it for elk.
this made my cat freak the fuck out
That's because you don't speak cat. This is the equivalent of Mike Tyson shouting " I'm coming for your butthole"
Well, that was adorable
Big fluffy friend!
I once spent a night in a tent next to a zoo quarantine building that had a newly arrived snow leopard in it. She was sad and we heard about it all night!
Sounds like a cat imitating a bird.
Aw :)
Did you know that cats can have the capability to either roar or purr, but not both?
This video made my dog bark. Lol.