EACH SNOW
LEOPARD’S FUR
PATTERN IS
DIFFERENT –
LIKE A HUMAN
FINGERPRINT
as they grew up. One of them actually left Tost and found a new
home in a different mountain range. To get there, this cat crossed
some 50km of steppe. Having believed until then that snow
leopards do not move out of the mountains, we could hardly
believe our eyes!
We’ve also found out that males and females sometimes share
a home range, but that there is very little overlap between
the territories of male snow leopards. We’ve been able to
calculate the average size of a snow leopard home range –
more than 200sqkm for males, which probably explains why
so few people are ever fortunate enough to actually catch
a glimpse of the Ghost of the Mountain.
We were learning more and more about wild snow leopards,
but the behaviour of mother and cubs was one missing piece of
the puzzle – nobody really understood what happened in the
months before the cubs first follow their mother out of the den.
Anu would help change that!
In May 2011, a few months after Anu had set off on her own,
Örjan managed to capture her and fit a GPS collar on her. It was
most likely too early for her to be pregnant, but, with the collars
lasting for up to two years, the team was hopeful for 2012.
For about eight months, Anu was as steady as a young cat can
be. She patrolled her home range, took down an ibex or an argali
roughly every nine days or so, and lived her solitary life. In early
2012, however, she seemed to change ever so slightly. First, she
stayed put in one area for about a week – a very unusual pattern!
It seemed like too long a break to just be a kill. Could Anu have
met a mate?
She picked up her nomadic life again for a while after that,
but soon began restricting her movements more and more,
using only a very small portion of her home range at the end.
Eventually, she stopped moving altogether.
For Örjan and his colleagues, this was exactly the sign they 3X SNOW LEOPARD TRUST, KULBHUSAN SINGH SURYAWANSHI