| PSYCHOLOGYINNOVATIONTracking Cats
Camera traps are a fantastic tool to observe
animals over a long time period – but they
have their limitations. They don’t tell you what
happens between pictures. Do the cats just
lounge nearby, and occasionally snap a selfie?
Or do they travel extensively, and only come
back to the camera once a year? What do they
eat? How much? Where do they hunt?
To learn more about the snow leopard’s
behaviour and needs, we’ve also used GPS
tracking collars. This involves a very skilled
and sensitive operation where a wild snow
leopard is caught, tranquilized and fitted
with a GPS satellite collar. Fitted on a cat,
these collars send the animal’s location to
a satellite every few hours. From there,
the data makes its way onto a computer,
where our scientists feed it into a custom
geo-information program. The result: a map of
a snow leopard’s wanderings in near real-time!
Less than 50 snow leopards have ever been
tracked this way, and only a handful of people
have the skills necessary to capture and equip
one of these elusive cats with a GPS collar.
Our Swedish biologist Örjan Johansson is
the most accomplished of them. He has handled
nearly 50 wild snow leopard captures and
successfully collared 21 snow leopards to date,
all as part of our study in Tost!
Thanks to the work of Örjan and his
colleagues, we’ve been able to track
the dispersal of two young snow leopardsSome of the most exciting breakthroughs have come from
the Snow Leopard Trust’s long-term snow leopard study in
Mongolia’s Tost Mountains in the Gobi Desert. Here, hours
away from the nearest town, scientists have set up one of
the world’s most remote research camps – fitting for the study
of one of the planet’s most elusive creatures.
For eight years, an international team of researchers has
surveyed these mountains with remote-sensor camera traps
that take a picture every time an animal passes in front of them.
In this time, they’ve captured thousands of photos of the area’s
wildlife – ibex, argali sheep, foxes, golden eagles... and
the majestic snow leopards!
Each snow leopard’s fur pattern is different – like a human
fingerprint. Comparing these patterns, our team has been able
to identify more than 40 individual snow leopards in the course
of this study.
One of these cats is a female named Anu.
The Story of Anu...
The first time we saw her was in the summer of 2010, when
she was around a year old. One of our camera traps had taken
her picture as she followed her mother across a sunny meadow.
Tiny and helpless at birth, Anu had already grown into
a young adult when we first caught a glimpse of her. Another
six months of learning from her mother and she’d be ready to set
out into the world alone and establish her own home range.
Snow leopard mothers raise their offspring alone, providing
food and shelter for their cubs, and, later, teaching them all
the skills necessary for survival in this harsh habitat.
At around 18 months, the young cats disperse.
Anu did not diverge from this pattern. When we encountered
her again in April 2011, she was on her own, 20km from the last
location at which we had photographed her with her mom.
ABOVE: A snow
leopard is rarely
seen
ABOVE RIGHT:
Anu’s cub being
measured
RIGHT: Camera trap
images of Anu and
her den| SNOW LEOPARDSWILDLIFE60 April 2017