The snow leopard
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
The morphology of this panther is adapted perfectly to its environment. The color of its fur allows him a perfect imitation daN its habitat rock and snow-covered. It also enables him to tolerate very low temperatures.
Its tail, long to 1m/90 cm plays a very important part. Almost as long as its body, it makes beam during its rises.
The size of a panther of snows is approximately 1.30 m for a weight going from 35 kg to 55 kg.
Its retractile claws have a double function. When they returned, they support a quiet approach. When they left they help it to clutch its preys. Its feet are equipped with broad bearings of hairs which increase surface and allow by it an easier walk in a soft snow.
Except this body of athlete, his directions are very powerful. Its night vision quite higher than ours what enables him to drive out at daybreak or than fell the night.
This felid does not howl and he eats squatted. So some zoologists classified it in the Uncia kind. Its scientific name becomes “Uncia uncia”. But this classification does not achieve the unanimity.
DISTRIBUTION
One finds the snow leopard in Mongolia, in the west and in the south of China, in Nepal, in the Himalayas, in Tibet, in Afghanistan and to the extreme is of the Central Asia (the ex-USSR).
It is in the zones of altitude, between 2 700 m and 6 000 m, broken and steep of the mountainous regions to the arid climate with semi-arid, that the species evolves.
Its preferential biotope is between 3 000 m and 4 500 m of altitude. She traverses the rock grounds as well as the alpine meadows, the steppes buissonnantes and the Himalayan forests of rhododendrons. Although she is accustomed to high-altitudes, she can be observed occasionally between 600 m and 1 500 Mr.
