Snow Leopard Attack - The Ghost of the Mountains

The guys are joined by big cat biologist Imogene Cancellare to discuss the recent case of a skier's violent encounter with a snow leopard in Xinjiang, China. Watch here: https://youtu.be/-n6PF8HJ3ls ~~ Coast: Right now, Coast Pay is offering our listeners up to $2,000 credit when you get started at ⁠https://coastpay.com/CLAW⁠ Smalls: Get 60% off your first order plus free shipping at ⁠https://Smalls.com/TOOTH⁠ ButcherBox: Get your choice of organic ground beef, chicken breast, or ground turkey in every box for a year, plus $20 off your first box and free shipping when you go to ⁠https://ButcherBox.com/tooth⁠ and use code tooth. Remi: Go to ⁠https://shopremi.com/TOOTH⁠ and use code TOOTH at checkout for 50% off LMNT: Get a free 8-count Sample Pack of LMNT's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at ⁠drinklmnt.com/tooth⁠ ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social: Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Wes Larson?

  All of you Tooth and Claw listeners know I love a good story and that's why I want to tell you about What Was That Like? What does it feel like to get hit by a car while you're biking, or be attacked by an alligator, or learn that your spouse hired someone to kill you? If those are the kind of stories you find interesting, then What Was That Like is the podcast for you. What Was That Like is filled with real stories about the most surreal experiences of people's lives. On each episode, a guest comes on and tells about the time they found themselves in some kind of extreme situation. It could be an animal attack, hello, Tooth and Claw listeners, a plane crash, winning the showcase on The Price is Right, one of my personal dreams, and more. The show brings you tons of completely surreal, completely true stories, all told through the lens of the person who actually experienced it.

• 0:45Wes Larson?

  Check out some of these topics that I know will be especially interesting to you Tooth and Claw listeners. Episode 178, John was attacked by a tiger, a guy in Russia who was attacked by a tiger and only had a road flare to defend himself. Or episode 41, Lauren was attacked by a monkey, a primate specialist who was working with howler monkeys and ended up having a pretty crazy experience with one of them. So if you want to hear some unbelievable and inspiring firsthand stories, I invite you to check out What Was That Like? Every story is verified, so you know even the most bizarre tales are someone's reality. Listen to What Was That Like on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the app you're using right now.

• 1:36Jeff Larson?

  Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Tooth and Claw Podcast. I am Jeff Larson. We have Wes Larson, our bear biologist, who I normally always introduce first, but today...

• 1:48Wes Larson?

  I'm glad you did yourself first.

• 1:49Jeff Larson?

  I decided to jump you. I feel, I'm feeling big, you know? I'm feeling like I'm the top spot right now.

• 1:56Wes Larson?

  I'd agree with that.

• 1:57Jeff Larson?

  And then, always in third, we have Mike Smith with us.

• 2:01Wes Larson?

  Always. That's where he wants to be. Just the way I like it.

• 2:04Jeff Larson?

  Wes, do you want to introduce our guest?

• 2:06Wes Larson?

  I would love to introduce our guest. Our guest today has been a long time coming. We've probably been online friends for like eight or nine years. And I remember when we first became online friends, I was really happy because I was happy to be friends with a snow leopard biologist. And then we've become closer friends since, especially because her and her husband moved to Missoula. So Imogen, who's our guest today, has worked for big cat organizations like Pantera, specialized in snow leopards, done some bobcat work, a lot of other species too. And we're thrilled, Imogen, to finally have you on Tooth and Claw.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm super stoked to be here. Thanks for having me.

• 2:46Wes Larson?

  Of course. So before we get into kind of our main course for the episode. Well, first of all, do you guys have anything you need to say? Jeff and Mike, you guys are probably jet lagged.

• 2:57Jeff Larson?

  I've, no, I mean, you nailed it with the jet lagged. That's how I'm feeling. I've woken up twice today and both times not known that I was in America.

• 3:09Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Jeff Larson?

  And I've been here for like three days. So it's like, get a grip, buddy.

• 3:14Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that's still kind of happening to me and I've been back for over a week. So it's going to take you, it'll take Mike like four months to get over his jet lag.

• 3:23Jeff Larson?

  Me and Wes had like a little bit of a stressful morning just with all the people trying to book this fall bard trip.

• 3:31Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 3:32Jeff Larson?

  And you were just asleep through all of that. So I was kind of jealous of that.

• 3:36Wes Larson?

  Nice easy morning.

• 3:37Jeff Larson?

  You just woke up.

• 3:39Wes Larson?

  I recommend it. People that organized the trip just kind of slept through it too. So that's.

• 3:42Jeff Larson?

  Yes. I still don't know if they're awake.

• 3:46Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Well, I hope you guys get some good rest, but not right now. Cause this is a fun episode, an important episode. And before we get to the meat or the main course, we're going to have a little entree. And Jeff did bring up that we have talked about this particular phenomenon with snow leopards before. But I want to tell a little story that I found while I was doing research for this animal. We have Imogen here to fact check me. Uh, Imogen, if I'm ever saying something that you have like an interesting snow leopard thing pop into your head, by all means, interrupt me. Lord knows I'm used to being interrupted. And just, uh, and just say what you need to say about what I'm.

• 4:28Mike Smith?

  You like it.

• 4:28Wes Larson?

  Saying, especially if I'm saying something wrong.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Done, done.

• 4:31Jeff Larson?

  We typically make like a horn noise, just go like, and then we get in there, so.

• 4:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah, just do whatever noise.

• 4:41Mike Smith?

  You have to do that, Imogen.

• 4:45Wes Larson?

  All right. On April 21st, snow leopard expert Kamal Thapa woke up in a tiny village in the Fu Valley of north central Nepal. And outside, he heard a lot of commotion. He'd been staying in this village because about a week earlier, a snow leopard had killed a blue sheep on a road nearby. And the people of this village had taken most of the meat from the sheep when they found the kill, which I thought was really interesting. We actually got to sit by a blue sheep kill and watch a snow leopard come in and feed on it. But I didn't realize that sometimes people in these local villages will, will scavenge this meat as well, um, and take it from snow leopards, which the snow leopard's gonna get some, some revenge on these people.

• 5:28Mike Smith?

  Don't let the name of that sheep fool you either. They're not blue.

• 5:31Jeff Larson?

  They're not.

• 5:32Mike Smith?

  That's crazy.

• 5:32Jeff Larson?

  Thinking, yeah.

• 5:34Mike Smith?

  I'm pretty upset about that still.

• 5:36Wes Larson?

  Imogen, you've probably seen a lot of, a lot of blue sheep, right?

• 5:39Speaker 02

  I have seen a lot of blue sheep and I have seen a snow leopard hunt a herd of blue sheep. They are blue. No, I'm just kidding. They're not.

• 5:46Wes Larson?

  They have a bluish tint to them, but yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  A little bit of gray.

• 5:50Wes Larson?

  So this village was usually really quiet and sleepy in the early mornings, but on this day, it seemed like everyone was out on these dusty roads, talking and bustling around. So Kamal got ready, he went outside, he had his morning tea. And then immediately he saw a middle aged woman who was crying and really distraught and headed toward what was called Okal Goth, which was the large covered brick corral where goats from the village would spend the night together. And this woman was carrying a large bamboo basket, an empty basket. And Kamal noticed a lot of other people headed in that direction with large bamboo baskets.

• 6:27Jeff Larson?

  What colored goats?

• 6:28Wes Larson?

  Uh, I don't know. These, yeah, blue, all blue. Bright blue though. These aren't fakers. Um.

• 6:35Mike Smith?

  Gray than blue or whatever.

• 6:37Wes Larson?

  After he talked to a couple of people in the road, he learned that while the village slept, a snow leopard had crept into this corral and killed forty-five goats during the night, leaving the corpses of all but one. Yeah. So it killed forty-five and it only ate one. And Imogen, there's a term for this, right?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Uh, feeding frenzy? Uh, what term, what, what, what term are you gonna, what term are you thinking of?

• 7:01Wes Larson?

  That's one I came across too. I also found surplus killing as a term, and I know wolves will do this sometimes too. But I know that's a little misleading because that's not always the case.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's less, it's more of a frenzy based thing based on like being trapped in a corral. I think that's my opinion.

• 7:18Jeff Larson?

  I've seen it called Joey chestnutting, but it's when it's with dogs.

• 7:26Wes Larson?

  Hot dogs.

• 7:28Wes Larson?

  Mike around some Skittles.

• 7:30Mike Smith?

  Oh my gosh.

• 7:31Wes Larson?

  I think, I think your term is much better, uh, feeding frenzy.

• 7:34Jeff Larson?

  Skittles isn't even that crazy.

• 7:36Wes Larson?

  Or maybe like a killing frenzy might even be a better term because the snow leopard really only fed on one of these goats. And it's not like they have the intent to come back. They're not caching all these animals and thinking like, oh, I'm gonna come back and have a winter's worth of food here. They're not planning ahead like that. So I do, I do tend to agree with you that surplus killing feels a little misleading. But that is what it was called in this paper.

• 7:59Mike Smith?

  Surplus killing sounds like the politically sensitive term for a serial killer. We don't want to offend the serial killers. They're surplus killing.

• 8:09Wes Larson?

  On a liver.

• 8:14Mike Smith?

  Like Ted Bundy, I don't know, he didn't kill that many people. A surplus, I would say, but like compared to the snow leopard.

• 8:20Wes Larson?

  How many people is a surplus when it comes to murdering? One?

• 8:24Mike Smith?

  Two.

• 8:26Jeff Larson?

  A lot of people, I think.

• 8:27Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I would say.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Maybe that's the snow leopard's name in the story.

• 8:30Wes Larson?

  Yeah, Ted Bundy.

• 8:32Jeff Larson?

  I think he got at least, at least thirty.

• 8:35Mike Smith?

  Oh yeah. Well, see this leopard's got him beat.

• 8:37Jeff Larson?

  And then he said he did like a hundred.

• 8:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I don't.

• 8:39Mike Smith?

  They're always exaggerating.

• 8:41Jeff Larson?

  I wonder how many the leopard says it's killed too.

• 8:44Wes Larson?

  Well, I'll tell you.

• 8:46Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 8:48Wes Larson?

  All right. So after he talked to these people, he learned that the leopard had killed all of these goats, but one, forty-five, or sorry, had killed and left all of them, but one, it only fed on one. So him and his colleagues started following these people toward this corral, but one of the village elders actually stopped him and yelled at him, seemingly blaming him for the presence of this snow leopard in the first place. Oh, wow. So he actually went back to the village, and along the way, he ran into the owner of this corral and most of the goats. This guy was visibly shaken, but he assured them that he would take photos of all this carnage and then document everything for these men. A big part of the reasoning behind that is just that they needed proof that this was

• 9:30Wes Larson?

  a depredation event, so they could get some compensation for these kills, which I'll let Imogen talk about here in a bit, because I know you have some insight into that. A bit later that afternoon, someone finds Kamal in the village and tells him that the snow leopard was actually still trapped inside of this corral, and that the villagers now wanted him to take photos so that they could get that compensation for the losses, and they also wanted him to figure out a way to translocate this leopard, so to move it to a new area. He didn't have a way to move a fully awake snow leopard, so his plan was just to open the door and release it, but he's worried that someone from this village might follow it and kill it in retaliation for the death of so many goats. So they go

• 10:13Wes Larson?

  back to the village, they have a big meeting, they talk about it until 11:00 PM, when they finally all decide, we'll just let it out, and no one's gonna harm this leopard. But when they get down there, the leopard was gone. They found a gap in the structure where it had squeezed out and left footprints in the fresh snow. So they follow these footprints, and Kamal, you know, as a snow leopard expert, is certain that this leopard has just high-tailed it into the mountains, but then they hear a goat bleating from another corral 20 meters away. They run to this corral, peer in, and the leopard's inside killing all of those goats. Oh, gosh. It had just left forty- Gotta give him credit. Yeah, seriously. It had just left 44 goats untouched, and now it's killing more.

• 10:58Wes Larson?

  You know, this leopard loves the squeeze, not the juice. Commit to the bit.

• 11:03Jeff Larson?

  It's like how Ted Bundy was arrested in Colorado, but then he escaped prison and kept killing people on Florida.

• 11:12Wes Larson?

  I'm with you, Jeff. This is the Ted Bundy of snow leopards, without a doubt. Imogen's with you, and she's a snow leopard expert.

• 11:19Jeff Larson?

  That was a good pull on that.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  It's all factually correct at this point.

• 11:24Mike Smith?

  It all tracks.

• 11:26Wes Larson?

  All right, so now the villagers are enraged.

• 11:28Jeff Larson?

  How many did it get in this new one?

• 11:31Wes Larson?

  Uh, it killed eight and injured a further 10.

• 11:34Jeff Larson?

  Wow.

• 11:35Wes Larson?

  So they say that this-

• 11:36Jeff Larson?

  I would just act like it got me and laid it.

• 11:39Wes Larson?

  Maybe that's what some of these injured ones did. Who knows?

• 11:43Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 11:44Wes Larson?

  They say, though, that this particular leopard is habituated to killing livestock, and that it could start attacking people, too. They try to pull some of these live goats out of the corral. They get a big plastic drum that they decide they'll catch the leopard in and translocate it. And Kamal knows this is a bad plan, so he basically argues with the villagers all night again. And finally, they just say, "We're going home, you can deal with it." And at this point, he knows that he can just release this cat, but he wants the blessing of this village, because ultimately, these are the most important players in snow leopard conservation, which I'm sure Imogen is gonna talk about a little bit. But basically, he just tells them, if they're not willing to let this leopard live, he's

• 12:27Wes Larson?

  gonna leave the village, he's not gonna help them anymore, they're not gonna get this money anymore. And they agree, and they say, "Okay, okay, okay, we'll figure it out, we'll let it go." And they all let it go, and they get a really nice show of a snow leopard running away, and it's a good story.

• 12:44Wes Larson?

  Okay. So, as a bear biologist, this seems a little crazy to me. If a bear broke into a man-made structure, killed dozens of animals, spent the entire day in that structure, and then escaped and immediately went into another one, it'd be a very clear case of a bear that needs to be removed from this population. And there's a lot of reasons that would seem clear-cut to me, but the main reason would be that it's like a big risk to human safety. But that's not really the case with snow leopards. So Imogen, you want to cut in and give us a little feedback on this first story?

• 13:19Speaker 02

  I think so. Yeah. So crazy story going from one corral to the second. But unfortunately, what we're looking at is always going to be a case of where did human wildlife interaction go wrong? Well, not wrong. You can say wrong. So in the case of like, you know, feeding wildlife, obviously clear cut, like, don't do that. Not a great idea. But in the case of snow leopards, when we see these incidents happen so often, it's mostly because of like inequity or inefficiencies around corrals and paddocks that are keeping livestock or wildlife that are used by humans. So like, across all of Central Asia, there are a lot of nomadic herding communities that live alongside their livestock and they move with them. And they

• 13:59Speaker 02

  often have like temporary paddocks or seasonal like pastures that they will put animals in. And unfortunately, so many of these, they don't have roofs. They don't have like chain link fences over top of them. You know, the sheep or the livestock can't get out because it's like a six foot tall rock wall. But that's, you know, that's nothing. That's peanuts to a snow leopard. So these cats are easily able to jump in.

• 14:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  But then sometimes they can't get out. Like, maybe there is a roof, but it's got holes all over it. And so the cats get in there. And it's just like a fox in the hen house, right? It's the same exact scenario. They get in there and they're obviously in there because they want food. But then they get in there and everything freaks out because it's just a lot of things. There's a lot of killing happening in a really, really small space. And so that leads to that feeding frenzy or that killing frenzy. And so it's a, it's a problem that we see in a lot of different parts in Central Asia. And so like, if it were in another part of the world, yeah, I would agree with Wes. Like, this is obviously a problem animal that needs to be removed. But two things I think are really important. One, snow leopards are not a direct threat to people in the same way that like common leopards are or tigers are in certain parts of the range in terms

• 15:06Speaker 02

  of coming into like villages. But also realistically, there's a lot of cultural and socioeconomic associations with snow leopards, as well as faith in different parts of their range. And so it leads to folks not being as willing to harm. them. However, because we're talking about people that live alongside wildlife, it really shifts our perspectives and our priorities in this part of the world, meaning that like, yeah, a problem bearer would get removed, but it's a, it's, it's a snow leopard. It's a, it's an apex carnivore. It's, um, you know, nationally important. It's culturally important. It's spiritually important. Um, and if there's a way to, uh, to minimize the effects, the negative effects on both the animal and the person, that's what we want to see. And we do often see it. So in like,

• 15:49Speaker 02

  in this example, um, having programs that reimburse herders for livestock loss is something that incentivizes locals to not, uh, engage in retaliatory killing, which is a term that we use to explain, like a, a snow leopard kills your livestock. You don't want that to happen again. So you kill the snow leopard. So how do we minimize that without leaving these people high and dry without their resources?

• 16:12Wes Larson?

  And we'll, we'll have a conservation segment at the end where we can dive into that a little bit deeper because I think those programs are so important, especially for an animal that's as rare and as threatened as a snow leopard. But the thing, you know, the thing that you just brought up a second ago, that is held true for most of our history with snow leopards is that they aren't a threat to people. And I think that is like a big part of the reason that you can act very differently with this animal than you could with a common leopard or a tiger or a grizzly bear. But something we know about them really changed this week, and that's the meat of this meal that we're about to have.

• 16:52Jeff Larson?

  Real quick before, I want to push back a little bit, emoji. Uh, just, it seems like you're really letting this snow leopard off the hook to me. And like, if you're that snow leopard, you don't need to kill 50 goats and only eat one. I have an issue with that.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  That's fair. I mean, I guess that makes me a Ted Bundy apologist.

• 17:14Wes Larson?

  Your neighbor. Yeah. When the Ted Bundy stuff happened, you would just kind of be like, well, I mean, he got kind of excited.

• 17:21Jeff Larson?

  I, I think it's great to have.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  That's not the soundbite that I want to be associated with me, but you know, it's already out there. So.

• 17:28Jeff Larson?

  I think it's great to have like programs where we teach people how to like, you know, have better structures and enclosure their wild or their animals better. But I also think we need to be teaching snow leopards only one or two goats if they break.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 17:45Jeff Larson?

  You know?

• 17:46Speaker 02

  I think that you should lead the charge on that curriculum.

• 17:50Wes Larson?

  Jeff just carrying a whiteboard out in the Himalayas trying to talk to snow leopards.

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• 19:23Wes Larson?

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• 20:46Wes Larson?

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• 21:13Wes Larson?

  Okay, so like I mentioned, a lot changed this week when it comes to snow leopards. And when I say that, I just mean something unprecedented happened. This doesn't change how we actually look at the species. This is a crazy thing. And like the first time it's ever happened in really in recorded history. And we'll get into that a little bit, too. But I want to tell the story and I think it's very interesting. And Imogen, again, if I say anything wrong, please jump in. Okay, so there aren't a ton of details from this particular story. I did read a ton of articles and it was kind of what you typically see with something like this, where all of the articles are kind of regurgitating the same information. So I think I have most of everything that's out there unless something just came out in the last,

• 21:58Wes Larson?

  you know, nine or 10 hours. But basically, the setup for this is this happened in Xinjiang, which is in the Uighur autonomous region of China. So for reference, this is in northern China, not far from the border with Mongolia, Russia, and Kazakhstan. So this is kind of where all four of those countries come together. And prior to this encounter-

• 22:19Mike Smith?

  Can you do that cool thing where you put a foot and a hand in each of the four countries? Like down in New Mexico?

• 22:25Wes Larson?

  There's gotta be one spot where you can do that, I think.

• 22:28Mike Smith?

  You have to.

• 22:28Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Mike Smith?

  If they all, well, maybe not. I don't know if they all share a perfect little corner border like that, but unless you're really tall.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Three of them might. I think Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and a part of China.

• 22:39Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 22:40Wes Larson?

  There's also that bad, that Ben Affleck movie where you can like create a crime in one and then go into the other one. Triple Frontier, you guys ever see that?

• 22:48Jeff Larson?

  I like that.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Those, zero of those countries are places I would want to commit a crime.

• 22:53Wes Larson?

  Oh, yeah, that's fair.

• 22:54Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 22:54Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 22:55Mike Smith?

  What country would you want to commit a crime in? In what crime?

• 22:58Speaker 02

  America.

• 22:59Mike Smith?

  Like Y. Coler? Tell us the crime.

• 23:02Jeff Larson?

  That movie could have used a snow leopard.

• 23:04Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it could have. Wrong country, wrong continent. Yeah, right? So, prior to this encounter, people had been reporting snow leopard activity in this area. But on the afternoon of January 23rd of this year, a woman had finished up her day skiing in the resort near Kotokay Town, and she was driving back to her hotel. And as she was doing this, something caught her eye. A group of people were near the side of the road, pointing excitedly at an animal in the snow. And she pulled her car over and enthusiastically joined them. And you know what? I would have done the same because the animal that they were looking at is often called the ghost of the mountains because it is so hard to find in the wild.

• 23:46Wes Larson?

  It was a snow leopard and it was right off the road, right next to town, which is truly a once in a lifetime kind of sighting. But for whatever reason, this particular skier wasn't happy with the distance between her and the snow leopard. And she did something people in Yellowstone and Glacier and other wildlife hotspots around the world do pretty much on a daily basis, which is she decided to get closer than she should to take a better photo on her phone. Reportedly a selfie. No. But I'm not going to say that with any conviction. I will just say there's a fake selfie going out there with her and the snow leopard behind her. It's very much AI. You can see it in the snow leopard if you have an eye for this stuff.

• 24:27Wes Larson?

  But like so many of the news, storied news organizations reported this as like a real selfie that she took with the snow leopard. And I took two minutes to watch the video because there is a video that we're going to talk about. And you can see like a logo on her helmet. And then in the selfie, there's no logo and the jacket's like slightly different colored and stuff.

• 24:49Jeff Larson?

  And she's like on a slope and then with it attacking her, it's flat.

• 24:54Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And it's like daytime.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Also, animals don't look at the camera. Like if you're that close, then they're not, they don't know to look in the camera like we do. They would be, it would have been looking at her. So.

• 25:03Mike Smith?

  That's something else you should teach these snow leopards to do while you're out there, Jeff.

• 25:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah, Jeff.

• 25:08Mike Smith?

  How many fingers did that?

• 25:09Wes Larson?

  Take better selfies.

• 25:10Mike Smith?

  How many fingers did the leopard have in that selfie? Was that the giveaway?

• 25:13Wes Larson?

  You can't see it. It's feeder in the snow.

• 25:15Mike Smith?

  See, here's the problem with that though. So say I meet someone out in, just in real life, they, people have six fingers sometimes, like the guy in Princess Bride.

• 25:23Wes Larson?

  Yeah, cats do that sometimes.

• 25:25Mike Smith?

  That's going to be confusing for a guy like me, right?

• 25:27Jeff Larson?

  I have a conspiracy theory with that too, that I think at the start of the AI stuff, they were doing messing up the hands on purpose. So that we would be like, okay, at least we can tell what AI is. And then, once they got it in everything now, they're clearly putting out the good versions.

• 25:47Wes Larson?

  Sure. I will say, it drives me crazy that it's getting as good as it is, because it's still trash, and I still hate it, especially when it comes to wildlife content. But this photo did take, I did have to say, like, okay, I need to make sure.

• 26:02Jeff Larson?

  You had to look, yeah, like, at a glance, I could see why anyone would fall for that.

• 26:07Wes Larson?

  For sure, but I hate it.

• 26:09Jeff Larson?

  You remember our category we haven't done in forever, like, best Instagram shot of the story? Like, I think this story is an all-time contender, like, she probably got the best shot.

• 26:24Wes Larson?

  She probably has a great selfie on her phone.

• 26:26Jeff Larson?

  Like, if she was taking a video while it came after her.

• 26:29Wes Larson?

  Oh, that's true.

• 26:30Jeff Larson?

  That'd be pretty good content.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  You couldn't pay to get that out of me.

• 26:36Wes Larson?

  Yes.

• 26:38Mike Smith?

  Everyone has a price.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  It's tough times.

• 26:44Mike Smith?

  It'd take like, two boxes of Milk Duds for anything to be gotten out of me.

• 26:49Wes Larson?

  Yeah, some of those watermelon Mike and Ikes. For whatever reason, she decides to approach the snow leopard. It's impossible to say why this particular animal did something that others haven't done in thousands of interactions with humans. But as she got closer, it decided to attack, most likely defensively, in my opinion. It bit and clawed at her face, and either pulled her to the ground or she fell. And luckily, her helmet seemed to have prevented the cat from getting really good access to her head or the back of her neck. But I am curious.

• 27:22Jeff Larson?

  Saying to wear a helmet.

• 27:25Mike Smith?

  Yeah, there's no place a helmet wouldn't, well, maybe like, there's, maybe especially bedtime. Things get pretty raucous sometimes at night.

• 27:33Jeff Larson?

  A shark, it feels a little bit like.

• 27:36Wes Larson?

  Or a chimpanzee, just rip your nuts off. Imaging, I'm curious, with snow leopards, are they typically for like, you know, smaller prey? Because I think we're medium to smaller for their prey, you know, types. Are they front of the throat or back of the neck?

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Opportunistic, either one.

• 27:56Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Depends on where they're coming from. Yeah.

• 27:58Wes Larson?

  Yeah. So I don't know exactly what her injuries were, but this is where the video of the encounter actually starts. We see her lying face down on the ground with the snow leopard sitting over her, kinda like you would see with the leopard in a fresh kill. And this did make me think that if this was actually a defensive thing, if she got too close and it attacked her, potentially the snow leopard had decided that opportunistically it might feed on her. I don't know. Imogen, what do you, what do you think about that?

• 28:27Speaker 02

  I was, so seeing that video was, that was the only part about this whole situation that was kinda surprising to me, um, was the, the fact that the animal was sitting on top of her while she was still conscious. I think that it was a defensive attack. Like you say, I agree with you, Wes. And I think that the animal was ultimately like really confused by the situation. Like it's a high stress situation. It's atypical prey, but it's warm blooded and it's bleeding. And so if I bite you, you know, if bit, why not dead? Kind of, you know, thought process maybe. And so I, I don't know. I think it might be like a young inexperienced animal that's engaged in like natural behavior, but still trying to figure it out.

• 29:04Wes Larson?

  They actually caught this cat, so we'll get to that in a second. But I agree. But I do wonder if it was kinda like, oh, I killed this. Maybe I should eat it. You know? I'm not sure.

• 29:14Jeff Larson?

  Or like, you know, I don't really ever eat beets, but sometimes people will just put a thing, a plate of beets in front of me. And if it's just right there, maybe I might eat it. The chances, you never know.

• 29:27Wes Larson?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 29:28Mike Smith?

  You think maybe-

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Feeding frenzy.

• 29:30Wes Larson?

  Opportunistic beet eating. Yeah.

• 29:33Mike Smith?

  What about, so Jeffrey Dahmer might've been thinking that same thing. Like, I killed this thing.

• 29:38Jeff Larson?

  There's people here.

• 29:42Jeff Larson?

  If I were this girl-

• 29:43Wes Larson?

  Glad we worked both of them in.

• 29:44Jeff Larson?

  I would've done with the blue sheep and like ibex and stuff dude and just jumped off a cliff.

• 29:49Wes Larson?

  Run down a cliff.

• 29:50Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 29:52Mike Smith?

  Oh, man.

• 29:53Wes Larson?

  We're gonna get to that. Imogene, I know there's stuff you want to say about that. We're gonna get to it.

• 29:57Mike Smith?

  I'm all of a sudden realizing my dream guest, besides Imogene, is Jeffrey Dahmer, right?

• 30:02Wes Larson?

  Uh, sure, that's gonna be a hard one.

• 30:04Mike Smith?

  That's like 1A, 1B.

• 30:06Wes Larson?

  Killed in prison.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  I thought he was dead.

• 30:08Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 30:09Mike Smith?

  Oh, was he? Shoot.

• 30:10Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Mike Smith?

  All right.

• 30:11Wes Larson?

  Yeah, he was killed.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Do a séance.

• 30:14Wes Larson?

  This attack caused a lot of commotion from onlookers and a brave group of bystanders, including a ski instructor, rushed the cat, scared at a short distance away, and helped this woman to her feet. And this is where the second clip of the video starts. We see a group of people helping this woman over some snow and toward medical attention. She has a surprising amount of blood dripping down the front of her, but her face is obscured. She's taken to the hospital and from what I can read-

• 30:40Jeff Larson?

  Why do you think it's surprising? Like, it was kinda sitting on her and eating her?

• 30:44Wes Larson?

  I don't know if it was eating her, but it, to me, felt like it did a lot of damage from the amount of blood that was coming down. And it's not what I would have expected for, like, a quick defensive attack. What do you think, Imogene?

• 30:58Speaker 02

  I think it, maybe. Um, I think it's like, it depends on what you do when an animal comes at you. I mean, like, it seems like, from the photos, they were blurred, like, it's a little unsure, was she bitten from behind? Like, when she was taking a selfie, or was she bitten from the front? I mean, I think she had some facial wounds, so probably. Um, I mean, but there's a lot of, I mean, think about getting, like, a hit in the head with something. You can have a really superficial wound that just, like, you bleed like a stuck pig. So, I think it could, could go either way. But assuming, I mean, if she just, like, laid down in the snow, you know?

• 31:31Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 31:32Jeff Larson?

  And snow makes it worse, too.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:34Wes Larson?

  That's what, that's what my thought process was, was like, if this was defensive and she immediately kind of fell, to me, to have that much blood means that the leopard, like, continued mauling her. And just knowing about their behavior and how they don't really do this, I would have thought this would have been more of, like, one claw swipe, or, you know, one quick little thing and then the leopard runs off. So for me, that's why I say surprising. But I totally agree with you. Like especially head wounds can bleed like crazy. Um, so maybe I, I retract.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Well, no, I do still agree with you though. Like it's, I think it's definitely like a situation where I don't know if he like bitter twice scratched her a couple of times. Obviously these are like really, you know, bleed heavy areas. I don't know what the tech, you know, these areas bleed a lot. But then the fact that it just sat on top of her, I think that's what indicates like a little bit of like confusion or it's like, just you haven't done a lot of murdering of humans. And so you're just not exactly sure how to handle this scenario when it's presented. Not to make light of it.

• 32:31Wes Larson?

  No, it's like that guy that almost got away. The guy that almost got away from Jeffrey Dahmer.

• 32:36Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Jeffrey Dahmer should have sat on him.

• 32:41Jeff Larson?

  We should, we just do the Dahmer. No, I think, I'm like, I'm not trying to make it seem like, oh, that's wrong. But like, I think I just went through a similar thing where

• 32:51Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 32:51Jeff Larson?

  If you see a lot of blood on someone, it is shocking and surprising. But then it's like, I did just see a snow leopard sitting on top of her also. So like, adds up.

• 33:02Wes Larson?

  Totally.

• 33:03Jeff Larson?

  You know?

• 33:04Wes Larson?

  Basically, going back to this, this girl's injuries, we haven't gotten any photos of them yet. Hopefully they get released. When they do, I think someone needs to write a paper on this. So Imogene, let's, I mean, let's write a paper on this.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  We should write a paper on it. I'd be down for that.

• 33:19Wes Larson?

  Okay. But at the end of the video, the other thing that I think is really interesting is you can see this snow leopard walking pretty casually and pretty slowly through this deep snow and retreating back. And it's not really moving with any kind of particular haste. It does make me think that this probably is a pretty habituated snow leopard, likely the one they were already seeing around town. And to add a little fuel to that argument, a few days after this incident, some ranchers in the area lost 35 sheep to a snow leopard. Wildlife officials set a trap in this sheep pen and they caught the cat not long after. And they determined it to be the same one that bit this girl. I'm guessing probably through genetic testing, but I'm not sure. It could have been some other things they looked at.

• 34:04Wes Larson?

  But they also determined that it was a sub adult male. So that fits your theory, Imogene. And that wasn't maybe a very proficient snow leopard yet, still learning how to hunt and probably struggling how to, you know, hunting in this very deep snow that the region had received this year. And they're actually holding this cat until the weather warms back up and it's going to be released back into the wild. So that's great. I'm glad they're releasing it because I think if you approach a snow leopard this closely. It's not its fault if it decides to maul you.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  You can't blame a snow leopard for being a snow leopard.

• 34:36Wes Larson?

  Yeah, but this one's acting outside of normal behavior, which is always interesting. And you guys have any thoughts about it before we let Imogen teach us about snow leopards?

• 34:46Jeff Larson?

  I think like it's acting somewhat out of normal behavior, right? Because it's also like, most people don't get within like 10 feet of a snow leopard.

• 34:57Wes Larson?

  I, yeah, that's true. And Imogen can speak more to that. I will say in my research, I read about biologists that like freed them from traps by grabbing their tails. And even when they like let the snow leopard go, it just kind of loud and ran off. And like a guy that caught one from a horse by the tail in, uh, and then like killed it. A hunter with like a whip. They seem like they just don't really like attacking people. And to like, to get a little bit more on that, if you look at the history, there's like, everything says, well, there was potentially an attack in 1940 that involved a rabid snow leopard and two guys in Kazak- Kazakhstan. Am I, I'm saying that wrong?

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Kaz- Kazakhstan.

• 35:38Wes Larson?

  Kazakhstan, sorry, Kazakhstan. But it's like in this Soviet Union manual about wildlife, and that's the only source for it. And there's no, I found the manual, I read the source. There, that's the only information. And then there's one other one about like a really old injured snow leopard that like tried to swat someone. And that's it. Like, that's all you can find. Unless I'm missing anything, Imogen.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Not in, not like published. I mean, I've heard a couple anecdotes that we can talk about, but they're very few and far in between. So, yeah, that's pretty much it.

• 36:12Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 36:12Jeff Larson?

  I do wonder though, like it is, most of the places where people and snow leopards live side by side. I feel like maybe the people aren't really documenting everything scientifically out to the world, you know? Like if someone did get bit out there, there's like a good chance that it wouldn't become something that's like, okay, here's a scientific paper of a snow leopard attack.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  That's a hundred percent relevant. There are a lot of things. That are happening that the Western world is not finding out about, but it doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

• 36:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah, honestly, if you have any anecdotal stuff you want to talk about, this would be a great time and then we can get in to the biology.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think, so the anecdotal stuff that I have heard, so I've spent time in the field for my research, both on the Tibetan plateau in China, as well as in southern Kyrgyzstan. And that means I've worked with a lot of like, uh, local communities and herders. And in China in particular, so we spent a lot of time in a place called the Valley of the Cats and the, uh, local Tibetan communities, uh, have, um, I don't know if, if they've reopened since COVID, but prior to COVID, they had this entire like ecotourism opportunity that was available for, for folks. You come in and you stay with the locals, um, and you're able to come see the, the wildlife and you're almost guaranteed to see a cat. Similar to what you guys did in India, I think. And, uh, in this case, I had, I was told when I was there in the field,

• 37:35Speaker 02

  that there are a couple tour guides that have in the past, kind of maybe pushed their luck in terms of how close they're able to get to an individual cat. Um, and when I say close, I do mean, you know, closer than like probably 20 feet. And what's interesting about this is that snow leopards, like we're talking about, you know, why was the, the woman able to get so close to the snow leopard? That's because honestly, in all of the anecdotal evidence I've heard, cat, these snow leopards are just very unbothered by people. Um, and we can get into why in a little bit, but it seems like they're just not, like, they're not incentivized to run away like wolves are, like everywhere in the world. A wolf sees a human, bam, they're gone. It's not really the case in certain parts of snow leopard range, uh, due to their protection.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  And we'll, we'll get into that in a second, but, um, I, some of the anecdotal stuff has to do with people, people always initiating that contact, trying to get a little bit too close. And then the cats will usually like freeze a little bit and then they end up feeling a little bit, um, cornered. And so there's like some hissing and maybe some striking going out, but I've only heard of like two anecdotal incidences from that. But again, it's always initiated by a person, uh, pushing their luck.

• 38:41Wes Larson?

  Well, the one we saw, watched, watched me poop behind like 30 rocks. Yeah. And it was unbothered by that. So I guess they are just pretty unbothered by people.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  They are. I watched a snow leopard throw up in China and I have footage of it.

• 38:55Wes Larson?

  That's great.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  I don't, I mean, I wonder if this leopard has footage of you, Wes.

• 38:58Wes Larson?

  It might. It definitely had a great view of me, uh, having a pretty serious diarrhea problem on one of the best days of my life.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  You know, up and down.

• 39:09Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

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• 40:10Wes Larson?

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• 41:39Wes Larson?

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• 43:28Jeff Larson?

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• 43:36Wes Larson?

  Well, if you guys are ready, then we'll move on from this attack story and we'll let Imogene teach us a little bit about basic 101 with snow leopards.

• 43:45Jeff Larson?

  I'm surprised Mike doesn't have any more diarrhea questions, but I guess.

• 43:52Mike Smith?

  I just don't have enough firsthand experience with it.

• 43:54Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we need to teach you. All right. Go ahead, Imogene. Let's hear a little bit about snow leopard biology.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Okay, so I think it's always important to start from the top in terms of their evolutionary history. And so one of the craziest things about snow leopards is that their closest living relative is the tiger. So again, so to back up, Panthera is the genus of all the big cats. There are five big cats, lions, tigers, common leopards, jaguars, and snow leopards. So they all share an evolutionary history. However, the ancestors that gave rise to the tiger and snow leopard split off from the other three species like about five million years ago. And then that ancestor split off again and gave rise to what we now know as the tiger and the snow leopard. And I think it's bonkers because the tiger

• 44:41Speaker 02

  is the largest of the big cats and it's also bright orange. And then the snow leopard is the smallest of the big cats and is white, which is unlike any other cat in the world. And so it's a really, really strange, strange fact. Evolutionary history is very, very cool. Snow leopards live in 12 different countries in Central Asia. So Russia and Mongolia, several of the stans in Central Asia, so Kazakhstan, which we've already mentioned, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan. They also live in the high elevation mountains in India, Nepal, Bhutan, and 60% of their range is in China. They are, they are keen, they are evolutionarily adapted to high elevation. So what that means is there are like three

• 45:26Speaker 02

  species in the world that are adapted to living in low oxygen environments. That is the snow leopard. I think it's called a Himalayan rat and there are communities of Nepali people that also have this genetic adaptation that like that we don't have.

• 45:42Wes Larson?

  That's so fascinating.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  I just think that's fascinating. And so what that means is they literally have a gene that allows their body to, to persist, be successful through like the ATP biology processes that I don't really remember that well, in low oxygen environments, which means that's why they're called like the ghosts of the mountain, or they literally live on the roof of the world. Like their lowest elevation is like 9,000 feet and they go up to about 25,000 feet. So their name is really indicative of, of the environments that they live in.

• 46:11Wes Larson?

  25,000 feet? Isn't that just like, just below how high Everest is?

• 46:17Mike Smith?

  I think Everest is almost 30, but.

• 46:19Wes Larson?

  That's crazy.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  I have been at fif- almost 16,000 feet. And like you, you need to take medication. I mean, I, what, did you guys take the preventative medication like every day?

• 46:30Mike Smith?

  I didn't and I really should have, is what I've determined.

• 46:34Wes Larson?

  Ours also, we got to, to Ladakh in India and we were supposed to be like acclimatizing and getting used to the elevation. And then they spotted a lynx and it was at like 15 and a half thousand feet. And they're just like, let's go for it. And so we just like rushed up there and we had two people on our trip that ended up getting altitude sickness. So, yeah, it was, it was maybe a little bit too much, too quick for us, but we did get to see Eurasian lynx, which was cool.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  I have not seen Eurasian, I've picked up a lot of Eurasian lynx scat or poop. I'm really good at that, better than snow leopards unfortunately, but I haven't actually seen a live one. So.

• 47:12Mike Smith?

  What does it mean to be good at? You're like good at spotting it, good at handling it?

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So all of my recent.

• 47:17Jeff Larson?

  Picking it up.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  So, uh, from a biology perspective, like you can often tell what animal pooped by the way that it looks. And so there's some characteristic signs that distinguish like cat poop from a myriad of other species. And so like where we were searching for snow leopard scat, like we're looking for, we're going places where we think the cats are going to leave, leave scent marks. And so like that's the top of ridges, along big rocks and boulders and picking up things. But because cats are similar, um, in areas where like Eurasian lynx and snow leopards are, they're often, you know, it's hard to tell just because one is big, does, you know, bigger than the other, doesn't mean it's automatically a snow leopard.

• 47:55Wes Larson?

  Jeff, uh, Jeff leaves behind some characteristic signs when he poops too.

• 48:00Jeff Larson?

  I was thinking maybe a biologist picked up yours that you left all over by the snow leopard.

• 48:06Wes Larson?

  Be hard to pick up.

• 48:07Mike Smith?

  This is a weak, sickly human, not long for this earth.

• 48:13Jeff Larson?

  Wait, I want to go back to something you said earlier because you are a big cat biologist then. And a lot of times we say that there's seven big cats. So you would tell us that we're wrong.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  No, not really. So like in terms of the big cats, panthera is those five species that we've already talked about. But a lot of folks agree that mountain lions and cheetah should also be classified as big cats. Now it depends on the classification. If it's just based on size, I agree. Like mountain lions and cheetahs should definitely be in the club. If it's based on their ability to roar, then I mean, that's, that's one outdated or one train of thought is that if it's a, if it can roar, that makes it a big cat. And what distinguishes animals, that's four of them. Yeah. The snow leopard doesn't actually, is not able to roar. And the distinguishing factor has to do with like a flex, the flexibility of the hyoid bone, which is a bone in the throat.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  And the folds of like skin around that bone, they're able to vibrate. If the bone itself is a little bit flexible and that allows them to be able to roar. And so like snow leopards don't have that ability, whereas like the tiger does, you know, the lion does jaguar and common leopard. But the cheetah cannot, and neither can the mountain lion. And so it depends on who you ask, but I do, I think it's perfectly reasonable to include the mountain lion and the cheetah in that group, especially because the snow leopard is smaller than both of them.

• 49:37Jeff Larson?

  Oh, okay.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Snow leopards are a little bit smaller than mountain lions. Well, I mean, the cheetah is taller, but in terms of weight, they might be a little bit closer to being in the same weight class. Obviously height, the cheetah would be a little bit taller.

• 49:49Wes Larson?

  Snow leopards are fluffy, fluffy cats.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  They are very fluffy. They have.

• 49:52Wes Larson?

  They look bigger than they probably actually are.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. It's like a healthy male could be around like 90 pounds.

• 49:59Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  You know, females would be around 50.

• 50:01Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Why don't you tell us more about like morphology and physiology?

• 50:06Jeff Larson?

  Count our hair when we weigh ourselves. I think they should have to too.

• 50:10Wes Larson?

  Fair enough.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've never seen a snow leopard wet, so I don't exactly know what they look like. How much do they deflate a little bit? Certainly their tails would deflate. So if you've ever seen a photo of a snow leopard, you'll notice that they have enormous tails and the ends of them are also almost like a little bit puffy. That, their tail serves two purposes. So similar to a cheetah, if you've ever seen a cheetah hunting, they do something that the snow leopard also does. Like when the cheetah is running across, you know, flatland in the Serengeti, they're obviously much faster than a snow leopard. But one of the reasons that they're able to be so accurate is because they use their tail like a boat rudder. And so their tail literally flips back and forth at really, really fast speeds that allows them to cut corners while maintaining their speed. The snow leopard, their tail serves a similar purpose, but it's more for balance because

• 50:56Speaker 02

  they're usually like careening downhill when they are hunting. But because also they live in really snowy environments, you know, we have seen a couple, maybe everyone, I think everyone has, but if you haven't, look up the photos of snow leopards using their tail as a scarf. Because their tails are the full length of their bodies, they can like wrap it kind of around them, like they'll settle down and they'll, they'll wrap their, their tails up around their faces.

• 51:19Mike Smith?

  No way. That's incredible.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  It's very cute.

• 51:21Mike Smith?

  That's the cutest fact I've heard in a long while.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  It is very cute. And their feet also, so, you know, Canada lynx is a small cat that has like very snowshoe like feet because they live in snowy environments. The whole body of a snow leopard is adapted to snow. So obviously I've already talked about the gene, I've talked about the tail, but also their feet are very, very spread out and large and it allows them to be on top of the snow without sinking. Now, obviously they are going to sink in deep snow. However, if they're moving across something, whether it's ice or powder, they're able to maintain their traction better than like another species that's not adapted. It's like they literally have built in snowshoes.

• 51:55Mike Smith?

  That's cool. It's really cool.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  I think my favorite thing about snow leopards though, has to do with their, their physiology. So if you will take your tongue, if you're listening, take your tongue and rub your tongue on the back of your canines. So the sharpest of your teeth, your top teeth, the back of your canine is going to be relatively flat. The front of your canine is relatively rounded. That is a characteristic that all animals, all species, all mammals that, or I guess, I don't know about her, about reptiles, but in the case of mammals, all mammals share this, this common fact because those teeth are designed for shredding meat. And obviously our large carnivores are cats, those canines are severely elongated because that's how they are biting onto their prey.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  The snow leopard is a little bit different. The snow leopard's canine tooth is elongated, it's sharp, it serves the same purpose. However, the canine of the snow leopard is round all the way around. It's not flat on the back. And the reason for that is if you think about pressure on something like tugging, if you are an animal and you've bitten into something, like you've bitten into your prey, like you've bitten down into a blue sheep and that animal is thrashing around, obviously, there's going to be differential pressure on that tooth. However, if you add to it high speed and literally careening down a mountain, you have increased opportunity for having those teeth break off. From an evolutionary standpoint, it seems that the snow leopard has evolved

• 53:25Speaker 02

  that totally round canine because that creates total symmetry of pressure when that tooth is being yanked on from all different angles as they're literally careening down a mountain.

• 53:36Wes Larson?

  That's so cool.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  And I think that is just like the most fascinating example of evolutionary adaptations because no other cat has that and no other cat lives in an environment like that. And I just, I mean, that just kind of, it's just very, very cool.

• 53:48Wes Larson?

  It's amazing. Well, we learned too, in India, they kill yak pretty regularly from these different herdsman, which is a big animal. And then a video just went viral of one hunting ibex and attacking a huge male ibex. It looked like almost too big to where you would think it would, you know, kind of be out of its prey. But I was pretty impressed that the snow leopard, it almost got it, but the ibex managed to slip away.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  It did.

• 54:14Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was really audacious. And that's the thing about snow leopards. I mean, I think any carnivore, this is the case, like they, you know, most, you know, animals are, you know, carnivores are attacking their prey and they, most of them have like a less than 25% success rate. So in a lot of cases, cats, like they're only successful one in 10 times when they're hunting. And so, but every single time they're hunting, they have to go like, you know, like balls out, like 100 miles an hour, you know, everything, you know, they're risking everything to try to be successful. And in the example that you just shared, Wes, like there is no way that that animal, I feel like there's probably almost no way that a snow leopard gets through its life without having several broken ribs.

• 54:54Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  And thank God they don't have clavicles like, you know, because otherwise like I don't think they would ever be able to walk.

• 54:59Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 55:00Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  From those injuries.

• 55:01Mike Smith?

  Anything, or do they have any natural predators themselves? Is there anything that's going after them where they're living? Or are they kind of at the top of the food chain?

• 55:08Speaker 02

  They are at the top of the food chain throughout most of their range. There are some places in Far East Russia and also in some parts of India. And increasingly with climate change, some more parts in Nepal and China where we see a spatial overlap between common leopards and snow leopards. And in some cases with tigers and snow leopards. And that's not great. They tend to avoid each other. So it's not really like a problem, but for the most part, like a common leopard or a tiger is always going to trump a snow leopard. I mean, and I guess bears too, right? Like, I mean, brown bears are like absolutely horrifying.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Cool, but absolutely horrifying. They, they kill everything. And so, you know, if a snow leopard and a brown bear were to come into contact, yeah, that, that would be an example of where they're not like top of the food chain.

• 55:57Wes Larson?

  Or wolves, maybe a pack of wolves, but it seems like they are able to get away from most of these animals.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's about like a spatial temporal avoidance. Like they might exist in the same space, but I think they, snow leopards tend to like go all the way to the top of the ridge. And actually I have a friend who did his PhD on like they were, he was looking at spatial partitioning between like wolves and snow leopards that were kind of in the same area. And it seems like, like wolves tend to stay at a slightly lower elevation than snow leopards, just avoiding one another.

• 56:24Wes Larson?

  Yeah, cool. Well, what else, what else you got for us? I want to learn more about them.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  So snow leopards, like I was saying, like they're hunting pretty much all of the time, right? Because they're not eating super often, they're not successful super often. Snow leopards, despite being larger bodied animals and being capable of taking larger species like markhor or ibex, one of their favorite prey items, especially in the summer, are marmots, which is a, like a groundhog. It's a large bodied rodent that is like all fat. And snow leopards prey on those a lot. Sometimes females extensively during the summer months because the fat is just obviously so nutritious and it's particularly important for females when they have cubs. In early summer. And so, you know, like most rodents, they're kind of like one of the alarm systems of if wildlife is around or if a predator is around. And so, a lot of the

• 57:13Speaker 02

  times that we were spending in China, we often are like using marmots as a helpful calling tool to see if there might be like a predator around like a snow leopard.

• 57:22Wes Larson?

  That's interesting. Yeah.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  And the few times that we've seen, and I know we're going to talk about this in a little bit, but the few times that I have seen snow leopards hunting in China, it was always, it was both times it was lactating females. So it's like, in summer months, the females have cubs on the ground, the cubs are small enough that they're still in the den. But she's really needing to like maximize that caloric intake. And, you know, marmots are like a smaller return in a way compared to something big like an ibex, but it's certainly less dangerous. And apparently, they're very tasty.

• 57:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I've never eaten one, but they were tasty.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  I've never eaten one.

• 57:54Wes Larson?

  Can you go into, then, we've, we keep kind of alluding to it and hinting at it, but into their hunting strategy? Because I do find that very fascinating. You've already said that they're ambush predators, but just like how they use their terrain to their advantage?

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. So one of my favorite things to do, there are some different snow leopard organizations that often post photos, and it's like, spot the snow leopard. And the thing that's so amazing about snow leopards is that white coat with the like grayish, ruddy brown colored rosettes blends in 110% perfectly with their environment. And so, yeah.

• 58:32Wes Larson?

  What's amazing is-

• 58:33Jeff Larson?

  There's been some like Reddit posts of snow leopards where it's like, find the snow leopard, and it'll take me like 10 minutes. And then it's directly in the middle, and it's not even like a small snow leopard. It's just like, oh yeah, obviously there it is. Once you see it.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  And it's even with their eyes. Like, you'd think that, like, you'd zone in on the eyes, looking right at you, but that's just never the case. And so, I definitely think that if I were an animal, I would probably get eaten by one, because the times that I have seen them hunting, you don't see them until they just explode. And, you know, in the case of like this ambush hunting methodology, certainly, they are using elevation to their advantage. I've seen snow leopards- Both trying to use high elevation, meaning that they're above the animal they're hunting. And I've also seen them move below the animal they were hunting, just max any maximizing that landscape, that elevation any way that they can. In some parts of, you know, like if you think about like a mountain, the side of a mountain, you know, you've got like grazing blue sheep.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  There's often not a lot of, like, there's not a lot of relief. There aren't trees, like Jeff pointed out. They're going to be huge boulders, or there might be small boulders, or there might be absolutely nothing. In a lot of cases, there's going to be nothing because that's where their prey feels safe. Because if they have like a wide vantage point, how can anything sneak up on you? And that's where that, that, that pelage, that coat color comes in is so fascinating. And just like any other carnivore, but especially cats, like I think cats from an evolutionary standpoint are the most interesting of the predators because they're just so adapted to move in the most silent, slow way compared to other species. That that enables them to literally just walk across green grass. And you don't see them until they have exploded into motion. And they're truly ambushing.

• 1:00:16Jeff Larson?

  I have a thought from what you were saying. And when you guys do your paper, feel free to credit me for this because I think I'm on to something. But it, it was like a very unique attack on that girl. I think that the selfie might be why it attacked her because they are ambush predators. So maybe having her back to it and not facing it gave them that instinct of, okay, this is an ambush now. Whereas if she was like facing it, it would like realize that it doesn't have that ambush component to it.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  I think it's perfectly reasonable. I mean, it's already a really weird situation, right? She was already way, way too close. I think it would have happened no matter what. But if she turned her back, I mean, it's like, yeah, if they can't see you, or if, if you can't see them, they're moving. Right? And so that's why often so many times, like the last thing you see is the animal when they're already attacking you. And that is like the true definition of the ambush predator. So I think it's definitely very likely.

• 1:01:13Mike Smith?

  I think it's totally reasonable to react violently to, to someone just taking an unsolicited photo of you. You don't know what they're gonna do with that picture.

• 1:01:20Jeff Larson?

  You said you'd sell a photo of yourself for two Milk Duds.

• 1:01:24Mike Smith?

  I give me the Milk Duds and we can talk.

• 1:01:28Mike Smith?

  So you said something earlier that I'm finding really curious. So the snow leopard and the tiger are most closely related of these cats, you said? So did their common ancestor, because they have stripes, one has stripes, one has spots. And like, the obvious comparison is just clouded leopard, or just your bog standard leopard. I'm not a cat person. Yeah.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  Common leopard.

• 1:01:50Mike Smith?

  Where, which one did the common ancestor have? Was it stripes or spots that they started from? And how did they end up developing those spots like the other leopards did while the tigers have stripes?

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  Now, I don't think that we've, or we have able, we have answered that question. So like, in terms of looking at the ancestors of these species, there, I think the first documented case of a snow leopard ancestor is in a cave in Afghanistan. And they know it's a snow leopard from genetic assessment, but that's really ancient DNA. And so I don't think that, we don't have the, I don't think the genetic markers are there to determine what did this animal look like, like in terms of its coat coloration or its coat pattern? So I don't think that that answer, at least to my knowledge, answer is not like available to modern science. But in terms of like, evolution, when we think about a species proliferating,

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  like some ancient historical ancestor proliferating into different species, it basically happens when a bunch of individuals from that really old species that are no longer living, just migrate into different areas. And so in terms of like, the, like, thinking about like, Pangea, and that, that facilitated the radiation of a lot of different species, species basically moving to all different parts of a given continent, and then that continent split up. But that's obviously, that far predates like, this particular example. And so, the ancestor of all of the big cats originated somewhere in Africa? And those species were able to then migrate to what is now North America, to what is now

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  South America, to parts of Asia. And then obviously those continents fully split up and all of their evolution happens from that more concentrated location. And so my opinion for most of this, and I think this is like just the accepted opinion, is that when we're talking about like the evolutionary history of like just these five cats, their adaptations are happening really, really fast. You call it like evolutionary radiation because these animals were basically picking somewhere on a map, going there, and then trying to figure out how to be successful there. And so the cats that ended up becoming tigers are in lower elevation, warmid, more humid environments. And as a result, the animals that stayed alive were the ones that blended into like the marshlands or in the trees, you know, like

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  in the thunderbonds. And they turned, you know, despite being orange, they actually blended in with that environment. And then what became the snow leopard just happened to be successful at this really, really high elevation. And then you start to get into things like climate glacial cycles and animals getting trapped there. And did they live or did they die?

• 1:04:32Wes Larson?

  It's kind of like, like polar bears that turned white and learned how to hunt seals were once a brown bear. So it's just, you know, yeah, like Imogen said, yeah, habitat can really affect how they evolve.

• 1:04:45Mike Smith?

  I just learned 100 things, it feels like.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I feel like I was like really, really nerdy now.

• 1:04:49Wes Larson?

  No, it's all right. You've managed to teach Mike something, which is something I've been trying to do for a long time. He won't listen to me, Imogen. He just won't.

• 1:04:58Mike Smith?

  Why should I?

• 1:05:00Wes Larson?

  Well, you know, we're getting to where we probably should move on to our categories here pretty soon. But are there any other like really interesting tidbits that you wanted to drop before we do that?

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  So I think that some of the coolest things about snow leopards have to do with sort of the snow leopard, but also just the way that people live alongside wildlife. Like I had hinted at earlier, you know, snow leopards are protected in most of their range countries. But I feel like China, in particular, obviously the story kind of maybe violates what I'm about to say, but every, you know, people make their own independent decisions. My experience on the Tibetan Plateau is that one of the reasons snow leopards are so tolerant of humans is because humans are so tolerant of these cats. And I think that's just a really great example. Granted, yes, it's about the cat, but I think it's just a really good example of how wildlife can coexist with people in parts of the world if they're allowed to. And so I feel very strongly that like, you

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  know, one of the reasons that we don't see a lot of incidences of snow leopards attacking humans, yes, is because they live in really rugged environments that are difficult for people to get to. But it's also because the places where they do coexist, the people just tend to leave them alone. And it's just a really interesting example of like how an ecosystem can operate with people in it.

• 1:06:19Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 1:06:20Wes Larson?

  I um, I've been digging into mythology a little bit and like, didn't find anything that, there's a lot of different, I mean, there's so many, even within the same valley, you'll have different communities that have different mythology about this animal. But the thing that you're talking about that, you know, this kind of brings it up is that a lot of these cultures are Buddhist cultures where taking life for no reason is considered sinful. You know, it's considered wrong. And especially an animal like a snow leopard that it already is like, the protector of the mountains, the ghost of the mountains, you know, these noble spirits often that are there to protect these communities, their religion kind of shuns that behavior too. So that I think is part of it as well, that

• 1:07:03Wes Larson?

  there's this innate respect for wildlife. And that's part of theology and mythology to a lot of these communities too.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it does extend to other species. It's, snow leopards seem to have like the highest place of tolerance from that spiritual or religious perspective. Wolves, eh, it seems to be a little bit of a gray area. They are persecuted everywhere. And you know, certainly brown bears can be problematic, but you know, like bear spray is not legal in Central Asia. So like the herders don't have access to that. And so, you know, fortunately in that, in that particular example, they're at the mercy of the animals themselves.

• 1:07:39Jeff Larson?

  That's crazy.

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, I mean, some of the villages that I worked with, you know, uh, in, it's particularly in China, it was pretty commonplace that once a year, usually in the spring, almost one or two herders In the community would lose their life to a brown bear attack because they're just taking their yak or their, you know, their sheep up into the mountains and, you know, surprise, it's a brown bear. And, you know, there's no, obviously here in the United States, for example, there would be, you know, repercussions for individual animals, but that's not something that we see in that part of the world.

• 1:08:12Wes Larson?

  Yeah. One really quick, not mythology, but history thing I found really interesting that I found in my research is a few years ago, you guys remember when they found that Siberian princess mummy? It was big news for a minute. They found this mummy from Siberia in the permafrost, and it was a woman, and it was dated at like 25,000 years B.C. So it's like one of the oldest, best preserved mummies we've ever found. And she had a tattoo of a snow leopard, which is really, really cool to me. She had like an ibex, like surrounded by flowers, and then also like on her hands, I think, a tattoo of a snow leopard. Oh, crazy. Which is pretty rad.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  That is pretty badass.

• 1:08:52Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

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• 1:09:54Mike Smith?

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• 1:12:21Wes Larson?

  All right. Well, I have a bunch of questions for you and a few for all of us. So I think we'll move on to our categories if we're ready. Is everyone ready for that?

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Mike Smith?

  Let's do it.

• 1:12:31Wes Larson?

  All right. First and foremost, your favorite snow leopard from pop culture. And we'll all answer this one. Imogen, you go first.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna lie, I had to research this a little bit because I feel like I haven't seen snow leopards in tons of like video, like movies, with the exception of there's a lot of the different cartoons, but I haven't seen them. Like I haven't seen Kung Fu Panda, which has a snow leopard in it.

• 1:12:54Wes Larson?

  You gotta watch that. Yeah.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  I did watch Zootopia many years ago when it came out. I think it's a very cute movie. There is a snow leopard in that movie who plays an anchor, a news anchor.

• 1:13:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah, an anchor.

• 1:13:06Speaker 02

  And her name is Fabian, Fabienne Growley, which I think is very funny.

• 1:13:11Wes Larson?

  Great name.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  But the only other, sorry, this is a multifaceted answer. The other thing I will say, however, and it was the shock of my life, I was not expecting in the first five minutes of the documentary Tiger King, for there to be a snow leopard in the back of someone's van in 105 degree weather in a dog kennel.

• 1:13:30Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:30Mike Smith?

  Damn.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  So I didn't like that, but it led to some really great conversation about not having a snow leopard as a pet. So those are, those are my answers. We need more snow leopards in popular culture.

• 1:13:41Wes Larson?

  You ripped through a lot of them.

• 1:13:42Mike Smith?

  You hogged them.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 1:13:44Mike Smith?

  Not that I thought of any of those, but yeah.

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  Can't cut any of what I just said, because I said it all.

• 1:13:49Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I, I really had to think because I was like, there's gotta be one. Kung Fu Panda was the one that came to mind right away. And I was like, there's, because that one was so cool.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  Is it a villain?

• 1:14:02Wes Larson?

  Yeah, and he's a really good villain.

• 1:14:03Jeff Larson?

  What's his name again? You're probably going to do that one.

• 1:14:05Wes Larson?

  Tai Lung, I think.

• 1:14:06Jeff Larson?

  Tai Lung, yeah.

• 1:14:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:08Jeff Larson?

  He's so good at Kung Fu.

• 1:14:10Wes Larson?

  And it's Ian McShane that plays him. Great voice.

• 1:14:13Jeff Larson?

  Ooh, Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

• 1:14:15Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that's a good name.

• 1:14:16Jeff Larson?

  When they go up into the Afghan or Iraq mountains, I forget which ones.

• 1:14:22Wes Larson?

  I think it's Afghan. Yeah.

• 1:14:23Jeff Larson?

  Afghan mountains.

• 1:14:24Wes Larson?

  Because they're not in Iraq.

• 1:14:25Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, that makes sense. It's Sean Penn, right, is the photographer. And he like finally meets up with him and he's like, You're gonna take the picture and then he's like, sometimes I just live in the moment and don't. And is it just watching it? And I thought it, I liked that movie a lot. And I thought that was like a really good moment in it.

• 1:14:46Mike Smith?

  That's great. I couldn't remember any. So I did some researching too. And I came across, so this isn't a leopard, Snow Leopard character, but I did come across a little tidbit. Someone on the special effects team of the first Avatar movie, maybe the subsequent ones as well, said that they modeled the, the Navi, the blue alien species eyeballs off of Snow Leopard eyes. And I didn't do any cross referencing to check how accurate that statement was. I just took it on good faith that this guy knew what he was talking about and that this is a true fact. So there you go.

• 1:15:20Wes Larson?

  That was mine too. They changed them to yellow because Snow Leopard eyeballs are, are much grayer. And honestly, imaging convinced me they have the prettiest eyeballs of any big cat. And I watched a documentary prepping for this episode where one opens its eyes and you can see them like start to glow. It was crazy. It was like, it was a dark eyeball and then it like glowed. And I was, it was something I'd never really seen before. When the light hit it, it just looked so amazing. So for me, I, I do think they're my, now my favorite big cat eyeball, but Jeff's got.

• 1:15:54Speaker 02

  They are very ethereal.

• 1:15:55Wes Larson?

  About that. Yeah.

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  What's your favorite?

• 1:15:57Jeff Larson?

  You saw my face? I just feel like.

• 1:15:59Wes Larson?

  What's your favorite?

• 1:15:59Jeff Larson?

  Cat eyes light up a lot.

• 1:16:03Jeff Larson?

  In general, but I wasn't gonna say anything because I think your point stands. I wasn't trying to be, but I was just like, I don't know, cat eyes seem to light up.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  Have you, I mean, but have you noticed how they're, how different cat, well, I mean, cat eyes are very cool, but they're not as weird as goat eyes.

• 1:16:19Wes Larson?

  Oh, with the.

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  Goats have square pupils.

• 1:16:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Wes Larson?

  Goat.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  Which is a little less ethereal.

• 1:16:26Mike Smith?

  Satanic, right? That's why.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  We're in the opposite direction at that point.

• 1:16:32Wes Larson?

  All right. This, this Snow Leopard that we talked about at the beginning left behind a lot of bodies when it was killing these goats. So I'm curious from movies, uh, your favorite scene of like a villain or a hero leaving behind a high body count.

• 1:16:49Wes Larson?

  Impossible to just at least not shout out the greatest action movie ever made, Hard Boiled, especially the warehouse scene when Chow Yun Fat swings down on a rope and has a, man, that, anyone who hasn't seen it, I urge you strongly, but I'm gonna give a little bit of a backup because the one scene that popped in my brain first was actually the hallway fight scene in Old Boy, when he's got the hammer. This just leaves behind a whole hallway full of bodies in that movie. Also incredible. Yeah.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  If you count the ship, the Titanic, there's a lot of bodies in Titanic.

• 1:17:22Wes Larson?

  The iceberg. Yeah.

• 1:17:23Jeff Larson?

  I think you've got to give him the iceberg.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  The iceberg, that's true, that's true, that's true. That's the true villain.

• 1:17:29Wes Larson?

  That's a great pick. The iceberg from Titanic. Huge body count.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  Or the mummy.

• 1:17:35Jeff Larson?

  Really deep on the internet, you could give it to JP Morgan for the Titanic.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  True. Who is, who is the villain? What is the villain? This and other philosophical questions on our screening of Titanic.

• 1:17:47Wes Larson?

  Right. Jeff, what do you got?

• 1:17:50Jeff Larson?

  Oh, man, I have so many of these. Uh, Blue-Eyed Samurai has a really good one with like the guys with like the claw hands. And then One Piece where like Luffy learns, conquers hockey for the first time. It's like he's at Fishman Island and he's like, they have a hundred thousand people who are gonna fight him. And at the very, before anyone even fights, just with his presence, he knocks out half of them and it's just like.

• 1:18:19Wes Larson?

  It's so sick. Oh, you gotta get there, Wes. We'll see. Please. Okay.

• 1:18:26Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Wes Larson?

  I picked, um, I actually, I was gonna pick the prison scene from the Raid 2, but the one I ended up on is actually, uh, the ending scene of Rogue One, where Darth Vader shows up and you just see him go through that hallway. And you know me, I'm like a big Andor Rogue One fan now. And that scene where he's just like throwing dudes and hacking them down and everything and his lightsaber lights up and lights up the hallway. It's just like peak Star Wars for me. So I really, that's the one I picked. Okay, Imogen, I want you to briefly tell us your favorite snow leopard experience you've ever had.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  It's a toss-up between the same snow leopard that I saw twice in China. We were, uh, so the first time that I saw a snow leopard, it was a, it was in July of 2019. It was a female lactating snow leopard. We were out in a small van with a crew of snow leopard researchers and a bird guy. But on this particular July morning, it had snowed. Basically, we were on this tiny little road. There was a small river separating us from the face of this mountain, like this totally, you know, just steep mountain edge. And it was covered in snow. It was very quiet, beautiful. Uh, and we're driving along, looking to see if there's any signs of any animals. And, um, all of a sudden, the bird guy yelled because he had spotted a snow leopard.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  And I was able to turn my binoculars and catch the whole thing in frame. The snow leopard, it was, she was engaged in a hunting effort and she crested over the mount, the summit of the mountain. Like she just appeared, like she just exploded from the other side of the mountain. So she's on the top of the triangle. She jumps over it and just comes charging downhill, powder flying. Her tail is just whipping back and forth. I mean, she's just hauling ass down this mountain in this like most slow-mo BBC moment. That's like imprinted in my brain forever. And what she was charging towards was a herd of blue sheep, which is one of the main prey items of snow leopards. It was a small herd. There were like maybe 40 animals.

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  And as she, you know, she had gotten, she'd gotten down the mountain about 15 feet in, I don't know, like less than two seconds before any of the sheep saw her. And they saw her and they just scattered. And, and she just, she picked one and she went after it. She charged and then the blue sheep cut and all of a sudden jumped up and then the snow leopard disappeared. She did not have anything in her mouth. Um, and then I watched, we watched her skulk through the snow from like lower below the sheep. She was above them, charged down, charged through them, and then was now below them. And then she skulked up between them and she used her body. She all of a sudden chose to become visible and she climbed on top of this rock to split the herd.

• 1:21:17Wes Larson?

  Wow.

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  And what was so fascinating about this is that, you know, this is remote wilderness, but there did happen to be just out of like, within like a hundred feet of this, there was a, um, a cattle fence that was there. And she literally used that fence to her advantage to try to split the herd and then charged again, but this time uphill. She was not successful. She wasn't successful, but then she crawled under the fence and moved over to this boulder and like sat down because she was panting and out of breath. Um, and we were about a hundred meters away, like a small river, you know, separating us. Like we weren't, there was no chance we were ever going to get any closer, but she just turned and looked at us like she knew that we were there. I mean, it's a flat environment. There were just, you know, a bunch of humans.

• 1:22:00Wes Larson?

  Distance for a snow leopard too. I mean, that's close.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. And she just stared at us and then just plopped down on a rock and we just watched her for like 30 minutes.

• 1:22:10Wes Larson?

  That's amazing.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  And then a couple, two weeks later in this, on the exact same slope, we were back and we are pretty confident that it was the same female because of their territorial behavior and because looking back in the footage, like when you see her moving, you can see her belly shake a little bit and you can see that like she's lactating, like those mammary glands are full. And so we're pretty sure it was the same female, but it, there was no snow on the ground. It was this beautiful green, like clover field with white flowers. And like I mentioned earlier, the marmots were all out on this grassy area grazing. Um, and we just parked the vehicle because we wanted to see if we could find anything. And the marmots started alarm calling. And so we got out of the vehicle and just sat there for like a solid hour, just waiting. And, um, everyone was ready to pack up and

• 1:22:53Speaker 02

  I was the last one sitting there. I had decided to park in front of this, um, like scar in the mountain that wasn't green and grassy. Um, and I was watching all of these marmots and all of a sudden. The exact same thing happened. This female snow leopard just exploded, but she exploded out of nowhere. Like she was on this green grass. The grass is like four inches tall and there's no boulders. There's nothing to hide in and we were watching for an hour with our binoculars and we have no idea where she came from. We have no idea how she got within 40 feet of these marmots, but she just exploded down the mountain and threw herself into a marmot hole and again came up empty. And then again turned around and looked at us and then

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  just huffed and walked away. It was like both. Those are the coolest stories of mine I've ever ever experienced in my entire life.

• 1:23:41Wes Larson?

  We watched one flop down on a rock for 13 hours and I'll never hear the end of it.

• 1:23:47Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 1:23:48Jeff Larson?

  We watched it flop down behind a rock for 10 hours.

• 1:23:52Wes Larson?

  Most of the time it was out visible.

• 1:23:54Jeff Larson?

  I don't remember it that way. I would say majority of the time it wasn't visible. Or at least 50 50.

• 1:24:02Wes Larson?

  Outside of snow leopards, what's your favorite animal imaging?

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  Hmm. I hate to be stereotypical, but I'm gonna stay in the in the wildcat family. I I'm a big fan of bobcats. North, the bobcat is one of the coolest critters in the world. I love me a mesocarnivore.

• 1:24:19Wes Larson?

  Sure.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  The little dudes. Though we I've done a lot of live trapping with bobcats for research, like catch and release, like we anesthetize them and it is terrifying. The sounds that they can make and the moves they can do when they're in these tiny little box traps. They are the toughest, most ornery creatures I've ever encountered and I just love them for it.

• 1:24:42Jeff Larson?

  When you said hate to be stereotypical, I thought it was gonna be like horse or dog.

• 1:24:51Wes Larson?

  Everyone says this, but bobcats. Do you think you could take one in a fight?

• 1:24:57Speaker 02

  Hmm, not without a weapon. Are you kidding me? Like, if a bobcat got a hold of any part of your body, like, you would never use your hand again. It would sever everything useful to movement in your hand. I would never, ever risk that.

• 1:25:13Wes Larson?

  What's the biggest animal, then, that you think you could take in a fight? No weapons.

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  Okay, so I've thought a lot about this. I feel like an easy answer would be a large bird. But I feel like that's too easy. So assuming that you're willing to accept some scratches.

• 1:25:26Wes Larson?

  How large a bird are we talking here?

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  I mean, I feel like I could. I mean, I have seen lammargiers in person. They've got a lot of wings, but that's all they're working with. They have hollow bones, they're light-bodied. I feel like I could take them. All you've got, you've just got to grab onto a wing, you've got to grab onto a leg. I mean, even a great blue heron, I feel like I could take, with the exception of, you said, "no weapons", and I feel like you would have to wear eye protection, because all the water birds always go for the eyes. So I'm not willing to risk my eyeballs or my ego by saying that I could fight a bird.

• 1:25:59Wes Larson?

  You can probably still beat it, though, even if you lost your eyeballs. You could still beat that bird.

• 1:26:04Speaker 02

  Maybe. Okay, maybe, that's possible. I mean, I think about, like, how I exist in the world when I don't have my contacts in and I'm utterly useless. And so if I lost an eye, I might just, like, lie down, pee myself, and just, that's it. The bird's gonna peck me to death. Just die, you know? If they keep pecking, you know what I mean?

• 1:26:20Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:21Jeff Larson?

  What about, like, a Galapagos tortoise?

• 1:26:24Wes Larson?

  Tortoise.

• 1:26:24Jeff Larson?

  They're, like, 500 pounds, I feel like.

• 1:26:27Wes Larson?

  Flip it over.

• 1:26:28Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  If you could lift it, just flip it over like a tire or something? Or maybe just move away?

• 1:26:33Jeff Larson?

  Or just, like, sit on its head?

• 1:26:34Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:34Speaker 02

  Or maybe just walk away?

• 1:26:36Wes Larson?

  A Galapagos tortoise is a great answer. I've never thought of that one. That's, like, probably the heaviest animal that any of us could do.

• 1:26:43Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  It feels like cheating, but only because it's really good logic. You said "biggest animal", and that's a big one.

• 1:26:48Jeff Larson?

  Right.

• 1:26:49Wes Larson?

  He thought of it, though, so I think Jeff gets the medal there.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that wins.

• 1:26:54Mike Smith?

  Bobcat would be really hard to fight, too, because I'd just spend the entire fight wanting to pinch its cheeks. They've got probably the most pinchable cheeks in the animal kingdom, right?

• 1:27:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, if not friend, why friend-shaped?

• 1:27:06Wes Larson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:27:07Mike Smith?

  Ask myself that every day.

• 1:27:09Speaker 02

  Wait, Wes, what about you?

• 1:27:10Wes Larson?

  For me?

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:12Wes Larson?

  Jeff, I can't beat Jeff's answer. But I think outside of that, the answer I always give is like a whitetail deer. I think like there, there's a decent chance that it'd beat me, but I think that's one that I can go up against and like, pull to the ground and hold down and maybe, you know, punch enough to where I can knock it out.

• 1:27:33Speaker 02

  Is this a buck or a doe?

• 1:27:34Wes Larson?

  A doe. I'm not, I don't want to, yeah, but there's a chance that it can beat me still. They got razor sharp hooves. They mess people up, but that would probably be if I had to pick one outside of a Galapagos tortoise. All right. So another question for you, Imogene, your next bucket list animal that you really want to see in the wild.

• 1:27:53Speaker 02

  I have to give you two. I feel like every answer, every question you ask me, I'm giving you two answers. Um, I would love to see a blue whale. I think that, you know, I feel like there's no explanation needed, but, um, I also would really love, love to see a fossa, which is a carnivore that's native to Madagascar.

• 1:28:11Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  I'm a big fan of the mastelids, like the weasel family and, um, fossas are not in the weasel family. They are not in the vivarid family and they're, you know, weasel makes sense, right? Like we all know probably what a weasel is, but vivarids and weasels are all very, they call them phila form carnivores. I mean, phila, like as in cat, they're cat-like carnivores and the fossa, the fossa is in this weird gray area. They're very goofy looking, but very cool looking. Um, and I think it'd be super sick to see one of those.

• 1:28:41Wes Larson?

  Great answers. Is cake and ice cream one dessert or two desserts?

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  Wait, say it again. Cake, is cake and ice cream one dessert or two desserts?

• 1:28:49Wes Larson?

  One dessert or two desserts?

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  Can I say that I would never choose that? And so it means that it's not a dessert.

• 1:28:56Wes Larson?

  Well, if you had to pick.

• 1:28:58Jeff Larson?

  It's not a dessert.

• 1:29:00Wes Larson?

  Or two, okay. Yeah, this is a new answer. I guess we should allow her to have that.

• 1:29:03Jeff Larson?

  Wild take.

• 1:29:05Speaker 02

  I would never choose, I would never put cake with ice cream because I don't want cold cake. And so I think that makes one bad dessert.

• 1:29:13Jeff Larson?

  But well, that's why I would never choose ice cream cake where people are like, just say, ice cream cake's your favorite dessert. Because I don't want the cake to be cold. I want a warm cake with cold ice cream next to it.

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  I just want a warm cake.

• 1:29:27Wes Larson?

  I think though, like if any of us don't like something, doesn't mean it's not a dessert.

• 1:29:32Speaker 02

  What do you mean? If I don't like it, it's not real?

• 1:29:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  You're getting philosophical here, okay.

• 1:29:38Mike Smith?

  Very unscientific.

• 1:29:38Wes Larson?

  Yeah, like, oh, I don't like donuts. Not a dessert.

• 1:29:42Jeff Larson?

  Donuts is just breakfast food.

• 1:29:43Wes Larson?

  You're right.

• 1:29:43Speaker 02

  Okay, so like, if like a brownie with ice cream on top of it, that's two things. And so cake with ice cream on it. This is like deep philosophy. It's like it's a hot dog, a sandwich.

• 1:29:52Jeff Larson?

  That's two things.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  That's true. It is two things. It's two different textures. It's two different things.

• 1:29:57Wes Larson?

  I'm not trying to sway you. I want to hear what your true answer is.

• 1:29:58Speaker 02

  I don't know. I feel like I'm swaying in the wind here. I don't feel like I have a good answer.

• 1:30:02Wes Larson?

  Give us your answer.

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  I'm gonna have to come back to this. I'm gonna have to think about this and, and post about it online.

• 1:30:07Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  For like the four people that care to follow up on whether or not Imogen thinks it's one or two things.

• 1:30:11Wes Larson?

  Zero. It's not a dessert.

• 1:30:12Mike Smith?

  This is such a good ploy to get more followers right now.

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  Wait, why is it not a dessert?

• 1:30:18Wes Larson?

  Because you said it's not.

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  Is that what you said? Oh, yeah. I think that's true because it's not good.

• 1:30:21Wes Larson?

  I like that answer. We're just gonna accept that. It's locked in. All right. Another question to think about then. I'm gonna make you answer this one. Do you, if you had to pick between ice powers or tree powers, which of those two are you picking?

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  Follow up. Are the ice powers limited to, well?

• 1:30:39Jeff Larson?

  To breath?

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  Hmm. Are they limited to if there is ice present?

• 1:30:44Wes Larson?

  No, you can create ice out of water vapor. You can do it at any point.

• 1:30:48Speaker 02

  Oh, that's true. But does that mean like I can make a tree or I can move a tree? Like, can I bend the tree with my will? Are they vines? Oh, okay.

• 1:30:56Wes Larson?

  With tree powers, like in my estimation, you can like create fruit. You can shoot like roots and branches at things. Kind of picture Groot from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. That's tree powers.

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  That's true. I was thinking more defensively, but you do make a good, solid point on survive. Like if I can make a tree, why can't I make a tree that has fruit on it? I'm probably gonna go with tree powers.

• 1:31:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  I think tree powers is the most useful for yourself and others.

• 1:31:21Wes Larson?

  What can't she do with tree powers, Jeff? What's the big one?

• 1:31:25Jeff Larson?

  The kiss?

• 1:31:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Jeff Larson?

  I think cold kiss with ice powers is like pretty cool.

• 1:31:33Jeff Larson?

  Like you can kiss someone and have ice powers like in X-Men. That's cool.

• 1:31:38Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:31:38Jeff Larson?

  And like you can slide everywhere you go.

• 1:31:41Wes Larson?

  That's true.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  You can surprise your frozen.

• 1:31:44Mike Smith?

  If your popsicle's melting in like the dog days of summer, you could just keep that thing frozen. You wouldn't have to let it drip it down on your fingers. That's a big one.

• 1:31:52Speaker 02

  Maybe you would improve ice cream cake.

• 1:31:54Wes Larson?

  True. Tree powers. Answer.

• 1:31:57Speaker 02

  Tree powers. That's my answer. I'm not swaying from that one.

• 1:32:00Wes Larson?

  We got two more and these ones, uh, first of all, I want to talk about conservation. This is our conservation corner. Do you have a, a general idea of how many of these cats we have left in the wild?

• 1:32:11Speaker 02

  We think they're anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000.

• 1:32:14Wes Larson?

  Great. That's higher than, than like what it said, you know, 10 years ago. So it does seem like they're on, they're doing better than they were recently. Is that, is that correct?

• 1:32:24Speaker 02

  Yes, they were uplifted. Is it, I feel like there's a debate. Is it uplifting? So they were listed as endangered up until a red, uh, red list assessment through the IUCN in 2017. My, actually my PhD advisor was on that assessment team where they were trying to determine what the numbers were range wide. And because we have more information, um, they no longer met that minimum number criteria to be listed as endangered. So they were moved from an endangered status to a vulnerable status. I don't know if that means they were uplifted or downlisted. I always forget. But they're listed as vulnerable because of the number of mature individuals that we think are in all 10 range countries or 12 range countries.

• 1:33:05Wes Larson?

  And what are their main threats that we're seeing these days with, with snow leopards?

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  So climate change is a big one. That's a vague one, but it is still a big one because when you live on the roof of the world and you have shrinking, when you live on the roof of the world that is cold and snowy, and that habitat is shrinking due to a warming climate, where do you go? Now you can move north, like if you're a snow leopard that lives in China, you could migrate to Russia, but realistically the habitat within Russia is also going to be shrinking. And so that's a huge problem. Um, mining infrastructure in certain parts of the range continues to be an issue because that causes habitat fragmentation. In certain parts of their range, poaching is also an issue. And that is something that is likely to increase because other big cats and other small cats like tigers

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  and clouded leopards and leopards are being poached, their populations are populations are being obliterated. And so, demand for other species is only going to increase. And then realistically, some retaliatory killing, but most of the killing is related to poaching.

• 1:34:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah, from what I was reading, it seems like those retaliatory killings used to be much more common than they are now. And that's been through a really concerted effort by people like yourself and other snow leopard researchers that have talked to these stakeholders, these ranchers and herders and everything, and really convinced them, A, that the animals are worth more alive and B, that you know, there's really not that many of them and we need them to be involved in that process. So.

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we touched on that. We already touched on that a little bit, but like some of these different nonprofit organizations have what are called livestock insurance programs where they help the community by creating like a whole insurance process, meaning that if you lose sheep or several of your animals to a snow leopard and you're able to prove that it was a snow leopard, you're able to file a claim and get your, basically get your money back for what that animal would have cost, so you can go buy another one. And they do that with a written promise that they are not going to seek out and kill that animal as punishment for what it's done. And then that in combined, in combination with like increasing literacy about corrals and how they should be built, make cat proofing them.

• 1:35:20Speaker 02

  We have seen a large reduction in these retaliatory killings and increased coexistence that also prioritizes the needs of people who live alongside them.

• 1:35:27Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Jeff, did you have a question?

• 1:35:30Jeff Larson?

  I was just gonna ask if one of the 12 countries, if they were like particularly vulnerable to like, like their numbers are extremely small in any of those 12 countries, or if all 12 are like doing pretty well.

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  They do have different issues in different parts of their range. Uzbekistan has the smallest number of snow leopards. They think there might only be, they're like, might be. Be maybe a hundred there and there don't seem to be a whole lot of cats in Bhutan. So from a numbers perspective, that is just a natural, a natural variation. China has like 60% of snow leopard range. So in theory, 60% of the world's snow leopards are in throughout parts of China. But in terms of like differential threats, certainly there's a lot of mining infrastructure. Some I think I gotta be careful so I don't get in trouble here, but I think the Chinese government is leading a lot of the like minerals mining in parts of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

• 1:36:27Speaker 02

  So that creates a problem for people. And I think in the future, certainly issues with water might be a problem because snow leopard range covers so much water that the water, sorry, the, sort of the, the free water in Central Asia that overlaps with snow leopard habitat feeds about a billion of the world's people.

• 1:36:50Wes Larson?

  That's crazy.

• 1:36:51Speaker 02

  And so it's really, you know, their habitats incredibly important. So like snow leopards and people are inextricably linked in a myriad of different ways.

• 1:36:58Wes Larson?

  Cool. Which are the best. Our last category, uh, this is a new animal for us that we've dedicated an episode to. So we always give a claw rating, uh, for those animals. So on a scale of zero to 10 claws, you're going to rank, uh, how much you like snow leopards. And I'll go ahead and go first. I, they're a 10 claw animal for me. I, they, up until last year, when we saw them, they were my number one bucket list animal I wanted to see. And boy, did the one we see capture my heart in a very intense way. It just, uh, I don't think I've ever been so transfixed so quickly by an animal. And I just absolutely think they're gorgeous, wonderful cats, so they're 10 for me.

• 1:37:42Speaker 02

  We can keep being friends.

• 1:37:44Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:45Jeff Larson?

  I'm gonna have to give it a nine.

• 1:37:48Speaker 02

  Just. Okay.

• 1:37:50Jeff Larson?

  On the fact that, yeah. Shoot, we're just becoming friends, dude.

• 1:37:56Jeff Larson?

  So I count seven big cats and I think they're the hardest animals to rank. And I just don't think I want to give all cats a 10 out of 10 for all seven cats. I mean, is like a little bit like, I don't know. So that's why I'm giving it a nine and only that reason. I think they deserve a 10. I'm giving them a nine because they're like top. There, there's four other big cats I like more than them.

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:38:22Jeff Larson?

  I think that's fair.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  That's fair. They're all great cats.

• 1:38:25Mike Smith?

  Yeah, they're, they're a nine claw animal for me just because I try to limit myself to only having 10, 10 claw animals. Like my top 10 are the only ones that are going to have 10 claws. I don't want, I'm like very precious with it. For a category that doesn't mean anything to anybody, I'm being weirdly strict about it. But they're incredible. I love, I love all cats. My favorite animal is a tiger. Uh, and knowing that they're so closely related just makes me think even higher of them. High, that's a weird way to like, I think very highly of this animal. I think they're awesome and obviously incredibly beautiful and charismatic. And just like, like Wes was saying, pretty transfixing with their eyes and their big fluffy paws and everything. So nine claws is where I'm landing with them as well.

• 1:39:08Jeff Larson?

  Respectable.

• 1:39:09Speaker 02

  Obviously 10 out of 10. Um, I'm a big, you know, I'm a, I'm always careful when I say how much I love wild cats because I feel like the stereotypes. That's why I said I didn't want to be stereotypical, right? Because the stereotypes about like, like the, the cat lady really bothers me. And so like, I don't own things that are like, you know, cat print and stuff like that. Um, but I will say from like a ecological perspective, behavioral perspective, evolutionary perspective. And then also just like the, the way that we spiritually or altruistically connect to wild animals. I think that as a suite, the wild cats are just the most interesting. And if you compare them to every other mammalian carnivore, they outpace them in pretty much every single category.

• 1:39:51Speaker 02

  In terms of just like their skills, their abilities, the way that they exist and move through their life and their habitat. I saw you, I saw you think about that Wes and we can, we can go head to head on this. I know bears are pretty cool.

• 1:40:03Speaker 02

  That would, but with that being said, I still think, yes, the snow leopards are probably, honestly, the great love of my life from like a research and passion perspective. And I feel so incredibly grateful that I got to do my PhD on them and have done research and hopefully been able to make some type of meaningful impact for them in the world, even if it's just having more people decide that they like them.

• 1:40:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:27Speaker 02

  And giving them nine claws out of 10.

• 1:40:30Wes Larson?

  Oh, it's close. All right. Well, we really appreciate you joining us, Imogene. If you want to learn more from Imogene, her Instagram is @biologistimogene. That's how I found her. And hopefully you'll become friends with her in real life like I did, because it is a true pleasure to be friends with you. And yeah, you got anything else you want to say before we wrap this up?

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  No, I'm just super excited that we were finally able to do this. It's a great podcast. I have, you know, so many friends. You guys have a lot of fans in the Forest Service down in the Bitterroot. As a side note, my husband Mark is always, apparently his field crew is always listening to you guys. And so he's always coming home and telling me stuff. And so I'm just, yeah, super stoked to be able to be here. And I like the stuff that you guys do. So yeah, thanks a lot. It's been fun.

• 1:41:19Jeff Larson?

  Shout out to Bitterroot Forest Service.

• 1:41:21Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:24Jeff Larson?

  Thank you. Love you, everyone.

• 1:41:26Wes Larson?

  Love you guys. Bye.

• 1:41:27Jeff Larson?

  See ya. Bye.