Pod Insights Ologies Megafelinology (SNOW LEOPARDS + OTHER BIG CATS) with Imogene Cancellare About this episode Cheetahs. Tigers. Jaguars. Pumas. Panthers. Snow leopards. How big is a big cat? And who decides? Let’s ask the charming wildlife biologist, science communicator, and Megafelinologist Dr. Imogene Cancellare. She shares tales of remote field work, snow-capped mountains, narrow escapes, camera trap revelations, DNA discoveries, brinks of extinction, if big cats like big boxes, why tails can be bobbed, lioness manes, big cat attacks, and making huge biscuits. Also: how to make your cats *Obsessed* with you.
Transcript 16,776 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Alie Ward? Oh, hey, it's that chair you broke. That was not your fault. Ali Ward, this is Ologies. This is mega felinology. It's big cats. So you learned way back in our felinology episode about house cats, which we're going to link in the show notes, that felinology comes from the Latin felinus for cats. Mega means huge, but in Greek. So this word is a mishmash, but it's big, wild kitties. It includes tigers, panthers, jaguars, common leopards, cheetahs. We also talk about bobcats and cougars, snow leopards. Some of those are the same. And we'll explain how that works, as well as take you to some remote mountain ranges and sunlit meadows to spy on elusive species that if they could, would probably knock stuff
0:44 Alie Ward? off of huge bookshelves. Big cats, big deal. But first, thank you to patrons who support the show for one hot dollar or more every month and who submit questions via patreon.com/ologies. You too can ask the ologist questions before we record. Thanks to everyone in Ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com, totes, hats, all of those things. And as always, you can support this show with just a few minutes of your time by leaving us a good review. And they warm my heart so much, I read all of them, such as this recent one from numac83, who wrote, "Highly recommend. I love listening to Ali nerd out with someone who is passionate about their ology. I even scheduled an appointment to cut bangs." Numac83, as we always say, "Cut the bangs, text the crush, we're all gonna die.
1:29 Alie Ward? Why wait?" Myself, I cut bangs this weekend. No regrets. Also, thank you to sponsors of the show who make it possible for us to donate to a cause of the ologist choosing each week. This episode is sponsored by Seed. Bloating, irregular bowel movement, gas. When your gut is off, it gets your attention. Seed's DS1 is a three-time award-winning probiotic clinically shown to improve regularity, reduce bloating, and alleviate gas so you can move and eat more freely. Take better care of your gut with Seed. Get 25% off with code 25OLOGIES at seed.com/ologies. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. We have to say that.
2:14 Alie Ward? Being safer on the road starts with the person behind the wheel. That's Mazda's philosophy when designing every vehicle. Their proactive safety features help keep you more aware, connected, and engaged during every drive, which means your car does more than help protect you. It makes you a safer driver, which helps protect everyone. That's why Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. To learn more, visit MazdaUSA.com. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Ugh, trips are full of unexpected discoveries. Maybe you see a sea slug, or you find out that your friend still sleeps with a stuffed animal. But when it comes to your vacation rental, there should not be any surprises.
2:57 Alie Ward? When you book a Verbo vacation rental, if what you expect isn't what you get, Verbo Care has you covered. If something's broken or just not right, Verbo will work to make it right. Plus, you get 24/7 live human support with every booking. Grab your stuffy, we're going on vacay. So book today on the Verbo app. If you know, you Verbo. Terms apply. See Verbo.com/Trust for details. Also, if you're wishing that you could listen to ologies without any swearing or adult themes, we have Smologies in their own podcast feed, just for you in particular. Search S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S, Smologies, wherever you get podcasts. Please do subscribe to those, tell your friends and your teachers. Okay, so this ologist is a conservation biologist who's worked in numerous countries,
3:40 Alie Ward? a National Geographic explorer, and a Wildcat scientist who did their undergrad in animal science at North Carolina University, got a master's in wildlife biology at West Texas A&M, and earned a PhD in 2023 from the University of Delaware in wildlife ecology, genomics, and the ecology of snow leopards across high Asia. They're also a renowned wildlife science communicator and have worked as a guide for ethical science tourism trips in the Amazonian rainforest. Casual, they also have always been a favorite presence of mine on social media. They share tales and photos of fieldwork, adventures all over the world. And yeah, we're gonna hear some fieldwork stories. They're doozies. And though we've been buds forever, we have been in the same room never.
4:25 Alie Ward? But we hopped on virtually to chat from their home outside of Missoula, Montana. Imagine if Elle Fanning grew her hair out and also knew everything about snow leopards. That's what we're working with. Amazing. So find a patch of sunlight, curl into a ball for tales of snow capped mountains, narrow escapes, camera trap revelations, DNA discoveries, olfactory obsessions, stories from the brink of extinction. If big cats like big boxes, why tails can be bobbed, lioness manes, big cat attacks, making huge biscuits, and if cat purrs in the woods, would anyone hear it? With wildlife biologist, field researcher, lab whiz,
5:07 Alie Ward? science communicator, cat parent, and mega felinologist, Dr. Imogene Cancellari.
5:32 Alie Ward? You can hear me okay?
5:33 Speaker 01 Yes.
5:34 Alie Ward? We're all good.
5:34 Speaker 01 And you can hear me okay?
5:36 Alie Ward? Yes. Amazing. Oh, my God. Look at us. We're finally doing this.
5:40 Speaker 01 I know. I'm so excited.
5:42 Alie Ward? I know. I wanted to, I've never hung out with you in person, have I? Have I?
5:47 Speaker 01 No. Big bummer.
5:49 Alie Ward? I know. We've never met IRL. I'm just an internet fan from afar all these years.
5:55 Speaker 01 Same. Same.
5:56 Alie Ward? We like each other. Okay, let's get into it.
5:58 Speaker 01 Imogene Cancellari, she/her.
6:01 Alie Ward? Dr. Cancellari. I was so thrilled when your PhD was in the bag. When you were studying this, did you always want to be like a cat doctor? Did you always want to be a PhD? Were you just in the field with bobcats and then you're like, I gotta go next step, snow leopards?
6:20 Speaker 01 So I've always been interested in cats. I always say that cheetahs are like my gateway cat. And then from there, I just kind of set out to be able to train and get education so I could ask good questions and so I could eventually study, you know, other species that I was interested in. I have not yet done research, active research on cheetahs, but I'm not done yet, so there's still time. But yes, I've been able to do a lot of other research on a lot of different other species as well.
6:47 Alie Ward? Where did you have access to cheetah information?
6:52 Speaker 01 For me, the interest in cheetahs mostly was jumpstarted through like natural history programs. There was a TV show on like Discovery or Animal Planet, I think it was just called Big Cats, and they featured a lot of footage and stories about cheetahs. And I have always found them fascinating as a result. Just like the anatomy and physiology of a cheetah and all cats in general is just very, very interesting to me, but also just the unique ways that they interact with their ecosystem. And in the case of cheetahs, like I'm obviously talking about how frickin' fast they are. And, you know, combine that with being apex carnivores, I find them very interesting.
7:29 Alie Ward? Do you have cats at home?
7:31 Speaker 01 I do. I actually have two cats that turn 18 this year.
7:34 Alie Ward? No.
7:35 Speaker 01 And I've had them since they were tiny, tiny little babies. Yeah, so I'm a big long time cat fan. I grew up with cats.
7:41 Alie Ward? Oh, you've been all over the world studying big cats. Do you see behavior in big wild cats that's similar to your babies at home?
7:53 Speaker 01 Yes.
7:53 Alie Ward? Or is that a myth?
7:54 Speaker 01 No, that's true.
7:54 Alie Ward? Oh, you do? Okay, okay.
7:56 Speaker 01 All cats are the same.
7:57 Alie Ward? Really?
7:57 Speaker 01 In one way or another. My very first job was in northwestern Montana out of undergrad. I had decided that I did not want to go to vet school. I grew up on a farm. I was very interested in animals and nature, and I thought that the only pathway, if you're interested in animals, was to be a veterinarian.
8:14 Alie Ward? Imogen says she's thankful that she learned otherwise after a study trip to Australia showed her the importance of wildlife conservation and the thrill of fieldwork and megaphenology as a career.
8:26 Speaker 01 And my last year in college, I worked at a tiger sanctuary called Carolina Tiger Rescue. Now, this is a no-touch facility. This is not like Tiger Cane in any capacity whatsoever. They're accredited. I want to go ahead and shout them out because they do good work and we're not petting cats. Get your hand off me.
8:43 Alie Ward? Yeah.
8:44 Speaker 01 I worked there for a year, had a great time, learned a lot about all of the different animals that were there. But specifically, after I graduated, I came to Montana to work on a wild bobcat project.
8:54 Alie Ward? Mm-hmm.
8:54 Speaker 01 I worked with a PhD student, it was her PhD, and she had collared wild bobcats and she was tracking their movement to understand how they interacted with like a snowy environment, what was their prey like in both summer and winter. But we also, at some point, had to recapture the bobcats to replace some batteries on their collars that had failed. There's a lot of different ways that you can trap an animal, but we used box traps, which is the most humane method.
9:17 Alie Ward? So a box trap is of like someone put a burrito in a phone booth or a small room, and you were like, "Hell yeah, burrito." And then the door locked behind you. And then some sweet aliens were like, "Hey, can we just study you for like a sec? We're trying to save your species." And you're like, "What's in it for me?"
9:33 Speaker 01 And you either put raw meat inside of it, in this case, like deer. But what's really similar about cats is all cats, regardless of if they're the ones in our house or they're the ones in the wild, they love shiny things. And when we were trying to attract these wild bobcats into our traps, you're basically setting a trap out in the middle of the woods and hoping that a bobcat walks by.
9:56 Alie Ward? Yeah.
9:56 Speaker 01 But when they get closer, how do you actually draw them in? And one of the things that we always did is we would hang CDs at like bobcat level from fishing line because they would twirl and sparkle in the wind and they cannot resist that.
10:10 Alie Ward? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Do I wonder if house cats like that as well? Just the rainbows and the glimmers?
10:19 Speaker 01 Absolutely. I mean, I saw it at Tiger's Sanctuary. Granted, this is a captive setting, but all of the cats, if you give them a box, they will climb into it.
10:27 Alie Ward? What? Okay, why is that? Do you have any idea?
10:31 Speaker 01 I'm trying to think of like, what is the intelligent ecological behavioral explanation? I think the only, the only thing that I can come up with is it satisfies their need to hide and have like an advantage from their vantage point. So like if they're in a box, some part of their body is obscured and they are able to stalk better. So I think it really is just kind of a mimic of a natural ambush predator behavior. Obviously, I guess they're not realizing that if it's a box, it's totally open. Everyone can see them. You're not fooling anybody.
11:06 Alie Ward? Well, what about, I've always wondered, litter boxes in sanctuaries? Yes, no?
11:12 Speaker 01 No to litter boxes in sanctuaries. In the wild, all cats will use feces and urine to scent mark and they have their preferences for where they do that. Like, for example, snow leopards always defecate and urinate along the tops of ridges.
11:26 Alie Ward? Whoa.
11:26 Speaker 01 And that's mostly because it's kind of like they maximize their calling card. Like as in the wind is picking up the most of what they're doing. This is how they share their emails, but in captivity, we don't see that quite as much.
11:37 Alie Ward? Doing it on a ridge is like getting a billboard on Sunset Boulevard or something. It's just like, as high as you can go.
11:43 Speaker 01 A hundred percent.
11:45 Alie Ward? They want people to know they're there then. They're not trying to be stealthy all the time.
11:50 Speaker 01 No, and so this is definitely a way that they communicate with one another for territory, but also like if they're receptive during breeding season to let someone else know, hey, I live here. And hopefully, usually, the other animals, if they come across that calling card, they respect it. Especially if you're talking about two males, um, or if you're talking about females. But you know, sometimes females have overlapping territories. But for the most part, males do not for all species, all carnivores, cats included. Certainly, the main marker for that is going to be urine and feces kind of on the periphery of their territory as they're just constantly moving through it to basically guard it, protect it, et cetera.
12:27 Alie Ward? It's like wonderful graffiti. It's just like smelly, smelly graffiti. And, okay, when it comes to big cats, I should have asked this up top. Megaphenology, what counts as a big cat? Because I've seen Maine Coons that you should get a tax deduction for. Bobcats can be tiny. Where is the line, especially if you're a megaphenologist?
12:49 Speaker 01 So there's a couple of different lines of thinking. The first and potentially strongest argument that a lot of people previously, you know, adhere to and people like support is, does the cat fall in the big cat genus? And so the big cat genus is Panthera. And so we're talking about taxonomy. You've got, you know, your, your order, your class, your family, your genus and species. And so the five big cats that fall into Panthera include the lion, tiger, jaguar, common leopard, and the snow leopard.
13:19 Alie Ward? Oh.
13:19 Speaker 01 So those guys are basically irrefutable. They're in the club. They're the big cats. However, there are other cats that people argue that should be considered big cats, and I tend to agree with them. Specifically, the North American mountain lion and the cheetah.
13:33 Alie Ward? Oh.
13:33 Speaker 01 These two cats are relatively large. Both of them tend to be taller and weigh a little bit more than the smallest of the big cats that I just named. The snow leopard is the smallest.
13:43 Alie Ward? So the North American mountain lion, also called a puma, a cougar, sometimes a Florida panther, a catamount, meaning cat of the mountain, a painter, a deer tiger, or a mountain screamer. Not all of those terms are scientific or scientifically accurate. So the puma, native to North and South America, is not in the genus Panthera, but rather in the genus puma. While learning this, I Googled puma and a sponsored ad for pants popped up, and I was sucked into the vortex of the German sportswear company Puma, only to find that pumas, as well as other big cats, do not live in Germany. In fact, the company Puma was originally called Ruda, which was named for its founder,
14:27 Alie Ward? Rudolf Dassler. His brother, Adolf Dassler, was also a fan of his own name and portmanteaus, and the founder of the company Adidas. A-D-A-D-I-T-I-S. Get it? Adolf Dassler. Adidas. Eventually Rudolf gave up the name thing and just named it Puma. I don't know why. The two brothers, though, were bitter rivals. One owned Puma, the other Adidas. They hated each other toward the end of their lives. They're buried in the same cemetery as far away as the plots would allow. They were also passionate. Fascinating Nazis. Another Puma fact no one wanted to know is that after the company was floundering a few decades ago, it called in CEO Robert Louis Dreyfus. And if the name
15:09 Alie Ward? sounds familiar, that's because his second cousin once removed is Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who was of Jewish descent, which is weird, again, because the founders were Nazis. Also, Julia's dad was worth $4 billion at the time of his death in 2016. That's wacky. I didn't know that. Anyway, Pumas can be six to seven feet long and they can weigh over 100 pounds, although the males can weigh in at double that, 200 pounds. Now, a snow leopard in the genus Panthera weighs 75 to 120 pounds, much smaller than the non Panthera, non-big-cat Puma. Also technically not a big cat is the beloved cheetah in a totally different genus and is capable of running faster than the 55 miles per hour speed limit in most states.
15:54 Alie Ward? Now, cheetahs weigh in between 50 and 140 pounds. Again, not a Panthera or a big cat, but larger than the official big cat, snow leopard. For more on mountain lions, also, you can see our very sad but touching memorial episode for P22, the solitary lion that stalked around LA's mid-city urban park until his death in 2022. I interviewed drunk people on the street for that. But yes, cheetah and mountain lion, are they big cats?
16:21 Speaker 01 Some folks argue that those two cats should also be considered big cats, and I do tend to agree. The other factor is a lot of folks say that it should not be considered a big cat unless it can roar.
16:33 Alie Ward? Oh, no. Are you serious?
16:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, not all cats can roar, and that specifically has to do with the structure of a bone in their throat called the hyoid bone. Cats have a flexible hyoid bone. The bone is able to vibrate along the laryngeal folds in the throat, which is what produces the roar. But like us, like, we can't roar, and that's because we have a hardened hyoid bone.
16:57 Alie Ward? Yeah, we did a laryngology, and I was like, what the fuck floating bone in our neck is this? And I was like, news to me. But so the hyoid bone is what's making the roar?
17:07 Speaker 01 So let's see, tigers don't truly purr. Obviously, they can roar, but they do something called like a chuffing. And we often see it when they interact with humans in a captive environment. But they do still chuff at one another. And it's kind of like this rolling. I hold on, I'm saying, it's been a long time since I've had to do it. Because we can, you can do it to a tiger and they'll do it back. It's a good
17:26 Alie Ward? Oh, my God.
17:27 Speaker 01 Vv type sound. That's a communication, but it's not exactly in the back of the throat like purring is. Like when we think about our domestic cats purring, it's not like this vibrating ball sound in the back of the throat. This is fully in the front of their palate, like the sound that I just made.
17:41 Alie Ward? Mm hmm.
17:41 Speaker 01 And humans can obviously mimic it. I know the tigers do that. I think I've heard the lions do that. I don't know if jaguars and common leopards also do a type of chuff. It's mostly a truly a tiger trait, but I don't know if they do anything that's kind of similar or analogous to that. Yeah, and so for cats that cannot roar, they have a hardened hyoid bone that allows them to purr, but not produce a roar. And snow leopards cannot technically roar in the way that some of the other big cats can. So you see, like, we have this disagreement from a genetic evolutionary history standpoint in terms of their genus versus this anatomy and physiology thing versus just their size. And so certainly, I think the most inclusive option is their big size. And so we do often say that there are seven big cats.
18:26 Speaker 01 So it's the five cats in Panthera. So again, that's the lion, the tiger, the jaguar, the common leopard, the snow leopard. But I'm going to go ahead and add in the North American mountain lion as well as the cheetah, because they're big cats.
18:39 Alie Ward? Okay, and again, big cats tend to be able to roar.
18:45 Alie Ward? Up to 114 decibels, which is roughly the volume of a chainsaw. Audible from up to five miles away. And that is because they have a more flexible hyoid bone and voice box. Except the snow leopard, which is technically, again, a big cat, but has a more ossified hyoid bone, like the puma and the cheetah, non-big cats. But that hard hyoid bone allows it to vibrate its voice box dozens of times a second, making that purring noise when it's breathing both in and out.
19:24 Alie Ward? And cats purring, they tend to do this when they're chilling, when they're happy, when they're resting, or sometimes as a stim when they're stressed out. So with all these overlaps in size and hyoid bones, why aren't all seven cats big cats? Or at least in the genus Panthera? Well, the original ancestor to all these kitties originated in Africa. And Imogen says that these cat ancestors migrated north out of Africa into what is now Central Asia or parts of what's now Europe. But some migrated onto land that would become North and South America once Pangaea busted up roughly 200 million years ago. So they diverged there.
20:06 Alie Ward? Now, not big cats are the shorter small cats. And those include lynx, which weigh up to 60 pounds, the up to 30-pound ocelot, and the bobcat, which is between 15 to 40 pounds. So compare that to the South American jaguar, which can top 200 pounds and eat crocodiles. Unknown is if a jaguar would eat half the crocodile and leave the rest on your porch as a gift, which would be sick. But yeah, big cats, they're not inside kitties.
20:38 Speaker 01 And so it gets super confusing when we are talking about that nomenclature. But I think what is most commonly confused, like in fashion, as well as in natural history, is the difference between a cheetah, a jaguar, and a common leopard.
20:53 Alie Ward? Okay.
20:53 Speaker 01 Specifically because they all have different spots, right? So they're this like ruddy, orangey, brown cat that have some varying types of spots. The first thing that is helpful if you don't know what you're looking at is the cheetah has solid black spots.
21:07 Alie Ward? Okay.
21:07 Speaker 01 The spots are not open. They are not irregularly shaped. They're just nice, good old fashioned black polka dots. But the cheetah also has these black stripes, these black tear lines that run from their eyes down to their mouth. And that's unique for cheetahs. And it has to do with reflecting light. On these open plains, it helps them to create shadows so they can actually see better. And that is something that none of the other cats truly have. But certainly Jaguars and Leopards are most often confused for one another. And so the best way to tell the difference between a Jaguar and a leopard. One, the Jaguar tends to be a bit like stockier, a little bit like it. It looks like he's taken a couple more steroids than the leopard does. But if you're not looking at them side by side, it's hard to tell.
21:51 Speaker 01 And so the Jaguar has what are called rosettes. Their spot pattern are these beautiful, open, it's like three petals of this black circle that sometimes has a little bit of a darker centroid inside of it. Whereas the common leopard has mostly black spots that are, yes, solid like the cheetah, but they're slightly more irregularly shaped.
22:12 Alie Ward? Oh, okay. To recap, cheetah, the common leopard, and the jaguar are all this orangish, sandy brown color. Now, the cheetah lives in Africa and has long legs and solid spots. The common leopard lives in Africa, Central Asia, India, and China, and has solid black spots. And the jaguar lives in Central and South America and has those open rosette-looking spots. Now, a black panther isn't really a thing. What? They're either a common leopard or a jaguar, but are they not spotted? Oh, contraire. If you look closely at a black panther, hopefully from a photograph, you'll see the spots, kind of like a fancy fabric that's all the same color, but at an angle it has like a floral
22:57 Alie Ward? pattern. I think it's called a brocade or a jacquard. In terms of spots, we're not even going to touch on any of the small cats because this is not a microfelineology episode either. But I hope the mega-felineology spot information wins you a bet. I hope it humiliates your adversaries.
23:14 Speaker 01 And that's a good way to tell the difference between all of them. I don't own any animal print clothing because I find it's always incorrect and that drives me bonkers.
23:26 Speaker 01 I also already am combating the stereotype of being like a cat lady. If I'm gonna, I don't, if I'm gonna add to it, I'm only gonna add to it with like factually correct stuff and I find the fashion industry just doesn't do a good job. So shout out, they need to hire, they need to hire a cat scientist.
23:43 Alie Ward? I was gonna say they need you as a consultant. Cause yeah, if I see someone in a cat print, I always just think, oh, it's leopard print, like a leopard print mini skirt or something, but it could very well be a mishmash of cheetah and leopard. Well, let's talk about leopards versus snow leopards because you are a snow leopard scientist. I understand your PhD involved also collecting a lot of snow leopard poop, perhaps from ridges. How did you wind up in the arms of snow leopards?
24:14 Speaker 01 Yes. Okay. So I first became aware of snow leopards in 2011. I got my bachelor's degree in 2010, realized I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, realized that I really wanted to work on wildcat conservation. So I set out on learning as much as I could about mammalian carnivores in terms of research, like different projects, different techniques. I learned about snow leopards in 2011 when I saw an advert online for a graduate research project that was focused on snow leopards in Tajikistan, which is a country in the western part of Central Asia. It's near Afghanistan. It's near Kyrgyzstan. It's west of China. And I was super excited. I learned as much as I possibly could about
24:59 Speaker 01 Tajikistan, obviously about snow leopards. I mean, like I said, cheetahs were like my gateway drug, but then I learned about snow leopards and I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. So of course I applied and I got a phone call that I had been selected for an interview for this position. And I was freaked out.
25:17 Speaker 01 In an unreasonable or in a, actually in a very reasonable way. I was very freaked out. I was very excited. I did the interview and went really well, but I did not get the position.
25:29 Alie Ward? Oh.
25:30 Speaker 01 I was super bummed.
25:31 Alie Ward? But the position went to one of Imogene's good friends and colleagues. And Imogene went on to get her master's studying bobcat genetics, all the while still sending occasional emails to this snow leopard guy being like, oh, hey, I'm getting my masters. Cut banks. Email your potential boss. Nothing to lose. So a few months after completing that master's, she got an email saying, hey, interested in doing a snow leopard PhD? You'd be using your skills in molecular ecology and genetics to investigate snow leopard evolutionary history throughout their range, which is in 12 different countries in Central Asia. She interviewed and then one day, while at an RV park helping a friend with some weasel research, Imogene's phone rang.
26:12 Speaker 01 It was my day off. I was standing in the middle of this RV park when I got this phone call that he wanted to offer me this research position for my PhD.
26:20 Alie Ward? Oh, my God.
26:22 Speaker 01 And it was just one of those like really silly things. Like, I feel like if I could have been a squirrel or a bird watching me, I would have thought I was insane because I just started screaming and like running up and down this like fallen tree. And I'm pretty sure all the people at the RV park were like, oh, my God, this woman is insane.
26:38 Alie Ward? So exciting.
26:39 Speaker 01 What is this? What is this woman doing? And so that is how I fell into the world of snow leopards.
26:44 Alie Ward? You didn't fall into it, though. You were so good at keeping up with it.
26:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was a dog with a bone.
26:49 Alie Ward? Yes.
26:50 Speaker 01 Or a cat with a mouth, whatever metaphor you want to use. Well done.
26:53 Alie Ward? Um, what was the field work like also? How long were you out there in the snow trekking up mountains sniffing for cat poop? What was that like?
27:04 Speaker 01 Yeah. So first of all, the short answer is absolutely amazing. Joy of my life. I don't think anything will ever top it.
27:10 Alie Ward? So Imogen put her genetic skill set to use, filling knowledge gaps on where these snow leopards were living and migrating, and then applying that to conservation efforts across the boundaries of these countries.
27:23 Speaker 01 And we used like different genetic markers to do that. However, in order to answer these questions, I would, I have to have a lot of samples, which means I have to have data from a lot of individual snow leopards, which would be next to impossible if my only option was to capture every individual snow leopard that I could and either take like a blood sample or a hair sample or a tissue sample.
27:43 Alie Ward? Yeah.
27:44 Speaker 01 It would be very expensive, but also like ethically, it would be stressful for the animals. And so I do what's called non-invasive research, which means we're able to collect genetic data about individuals without ever having to come into contact with them. And like you alluded to, the magic source for that is poop. And we're able to take those samples and go into the lab and we're able to scrape off those epithelial cells and expose the actual raw DNA. And we can separate that from the DNA of whatever that animal might have eaten.
28:14 Alie Ward? Amazing.
28:15 Speaker 01 And so my trade is all cat poop. And in order to get cat poop, you have to look for it. So I spent a lot of time in parts of China on the Tibetan Plateau, as well as in southern Kyrgyzstan, trying to fill sampling gaps from all of these different collaborations that I manage as part of my PhD. So thankfully, we did have collaborators that had already collected cat poop and I was able to use that. And so, yes, that means that I spent time mostly in the summer, thank goodness, because it's very difficult to access snow leopard habitat in Central Asia. And as their name might suggest, snow leopard, they live in really snowy environments. They live in really rugged environments from like 10,000 feet above elevation all the way to 25,000 feet above elevation.
28:58 Alie Ward? Just for context, Mount Everest is 29,000 feet, only 4,000 feet higher than snow leopards are kicking it. No oxygen tanks, no gear, no Sherpas, no $60,000 selfies, just barefoot, nude, furry, hungry, and evolutionarily adapted.
29:17 Speaker 01 They live on what's called the roof of the world and it's super hardcore, right?
29:21 Alie Ward? Yeah.
29:21 Speaker 01 There's only certain times of the year that we can go do that. The first time that I went to the field, however, was in the winter. And because we're at such high elevation, we have, thankfully, thank goodness, humans have a medication that we can take that helps us process low oxygen environment.
29:35 Alie Ward? Oh.
29:35 Speaker 01 That's a problem for most humans because we don't have any physical or genetic advantages that allow us to process these hypoxic or low oxygen environments. But snow leopards do. And so that's why it's difficult to access some of where they live if you are a human. So just to back up, there are three species in the world possess these genes that allow them to be successful in low oxygen environments. It's the snow leopard, the Himalayan rat, and there is a group of Nepali people that actually also possess this unique evolutionary adaptation. But me, I'm just this like Irish chick.
30:10 Alie Ward? Yeah.
30:10 Speaker 01 So like I got nothing, right? So I gotta take, I gotta take the pharmaceutical, I gotta take the medication to, to make me stay alive in this environment. And so we did go in the field. I, I was in China. I was basically kind of a volunteer for some other research, even though it was like part of my PhD, you know, it was like a collaborative effort. And it was beautiful. It's wonderful. Like we're at like 11,000 feet. We get there, we're trying, I'm, I am trying to acclimatize to the environment and everything was mostly fine for the first couple of days, but then we got a, a bunch of snow dumped on us the night before.
30:39 Alie Ward? Oh, my God.
30:40 Speaker 01 Something about the barometric pressure change completely obliterated me. The medication wasn't working. We went to lower elevation. I was starting to get altitude sickness. And so we stayed at a lower elevation for 24 hours, which low is a joke. We were still at 12,000 feet.
30:55 Alie Ward? Oh, my God.
30:56 Speaker 01 And I could not get my resting heart rate below like 120.
30:59 Alie Ward? Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
31:01 Speaker 01 Yeah. So I had to call my PhD advisor back in the States. I had to let them know like, hey, I actually gotta, I have to leave because it's now getting dangerous. Like altitude sickness can be really severe, right? Your brain can swell or your lung tissue can swell.
31:14 Alie Ward? Oh, my God.
31:15 Speaker 01 Both of those not great for staying alive. So I had to get out. And so the next year when I came back, uh, it was summer and I was taking the medication that you take, it's called a cetazolamide. I'm gonna butcher how it works, but it basically allows you to process. Less oxygen in your body in a way that is not harmful. So it prevents you from getting altitude sickness. It prevents dying from like brain swelling or lung swelling.
31:40 Alie Ward? Oh, my God.
31:40 Speaker 01 And so I spent a lot longer in the field. I was in the field on the Tibetan Plateau for almost two months. Looking for snow leopards. I think I did five different countries that year. And I spent some time in Uzbekistan and I also spent time in southern Kyrgyzstan. We were working with the local herding communities, with the local governing communities to get permission to go into these mountains and look for scat. Like you're looking for poop in mountains. And so if you know anything about the behavior of an animal, you can reasonably predict where they're going to poop. They might live in these really, really rugged mountains. But if you can get to the top of a mountain, and if there are snow leopards in the area, you can probably find their poop.
32:19 Speaker 01 I mean, it was about sixty or some miles of just transects up and down mountains in about six weeks.
32:28 Alie Ward? Oh, my God.
32:29 Speaker 01 I mean, humbling, right? Like.
32:31 Alie Ward? Were you starving all the time?
32:33 Speaker 01 Sort of. I mean, I think I'm a little bit of an anomaly. When I'm in the field, I feel like my appetite just gets completely ruined for some reason. I only want like pretzels and Gatorade. So I basically turn into a hummingbird, which cannot possibly be great for my body. But I will say, the food that we ate in Kyrgyzstan and in China while in the field was far and above better than anything I've ever done on any of my research projects here in the United States. When I was doing grad work here in the US, it's peanut butter sandwiches. It is some type of energy bar. It's a hard boiled egg if you're lucky because you don't have a fridge. When I was in China and in Kyrgyzstan, we cooked over a fire every single night. Delicious.
33:17 Alie Ward? OK, but what if you're hiking to a summit and you don't have time to make a fire and roast something? Imogene says you need fat, protein, carbs, and also some quick, simple carbohydrates to keep your blood sugar up.
33:29 Speaker 01 And so the best possible option is a whole Snickers bar.
33:33 Alie Ward? Really?
33:34 Speaker 01 If you're fourteen thousand feet above elevation and you are hiking uphill both ways. You need fast, easy energy and it had never occurred to me that maybe I just needed Snickers bar, but one of the guys on my crew, he was like, yeah, we need to have a Snickers budget. And so we had a Snickers budget.
33:50 Alie Ward? I mean, I think that they started candy bars to feed soldiers.
33:53 Speaker 01 I didn't know that.
33:54 Alie Ward? Candy bars were invented for that purpose. So that makes sense. I also, there were times when I was, you know, broke in college and would be like, well, Snickers for lunch it is. And what a, you know, 55 cent miracle, a Snickers bar.
34:08 Speaker 01 Full circle, right?
34:09 Alie Ward? You can see our confectionology episode. It's all about candy history.
34:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that. It was a very special time. We collected a lot of good data. I did publish one big paper last year for my dissertation about the snow leopards. I'm very proud of it.
34:23 Alie Ward? Take a gander at snow leopard phylogiology and population structure supports two global populations with single refugial origin. She wrote that, but she says one ancillary thing that happened from that research was so interesting, literally the first day they were in the field in Kyrgyzstan.
34:40 Speaker 01 I was training some local herders that had decided that they wanted to volunteer. So I was basically training them how to like pick up scat in a sterile way, like giving them gloves, talking about the data, et cetera. And a gentleman reached into his backpack and pulled something out and handed it to me.
34:56 Alie Ward? Mm hmm.
34:57 Speaker 01 And I said, what is this? He said, oh, we heard you were coming and we found a scat. And so I collected it and I gave it to you. And it was just a scat that was in a nylon glove, right? So like not perfectly stored, but secure enough that it was sterile. And I said, great. I marked it down. I was like, first day, we haven't even climbed a mountain. We have a sample. This is sample 001.
35:15 Alie Ward? Yeah.
35:15 Speaker 01 I collected like 80 samples on that trip.
35:18 Alie Ward? Wow.
35:18 Speaker 01 Came back to the United States. We processed the samples. Sample 001 ended up being from a species that has not been seen in that part of the world in over 30 years.
35:29 Alie Ward? No.
35:30 Speaker 01 And so.
35:30 Alie Ward? Way.
35:31 Speaker 01 Yes. Yes. We documented, our team, for the first time in over 30 years, we documented the presence of a dhole, D H O L E, which is a very ancient social canid that had been extirpated from most of the former Soviet Union countries for over 30 years.
35:47 Alie Ward? Wow, what?
35:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, I know.
35:50 Alie Ward? Did you ever get a chance to tell that person like, thanks, you're a real one?
35:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely. They're in the acknowledgements of this paper and specifically in the actual document of it.
36:00 Alie Ward? This 2022 paper, "New Distribution Record of Dole from Southern Kyrgyzstan Using Noninvasive Genetic Sampling," in the journal Canid Biology and Distribution. It details that this dhole was also called the Asiatic Wild Dog, the Red Dog, the Red Wolf, or the Whistling Dog. But yeah, it's spelled "Diho," if you will. It's listed as endangered with a maximum of 2,000 mature individuals estimated in the global population. And in the paper itself, it says, "A scat sample was found by a son of Ranger Tuzbek Toktugul Uulu, and we thank him and his family for their contribution." And she says that this single scat sample
36:41 Alie Ward? helped scientists discover that the doles were not in fact gone, or if they had been, they're now returning to their former range. Or they might be living cryptically nearby in a pocket of land that humans can't access without a helicopter.
36:55 Speaker 01 And so being able to document that after, you know, decades of surveys, you know, researchers talking to locals, showing photos, saying, hey, have you seen this individual? And the locals repeatedly saying, no, we have not seen it. It seems pretty likely that they have not been there, but now they are. And so like, that was just a really, really amazing side effect of this research that is meaningful for conservation within those range countries.
37:24 Alie Ward? Well, I have questions from listeners about all kinds of cat stuff.
37:27 Speaker 01 Perfect.
37:28 Alie Ward? Can I ask you? Can we dive in?
37:30 Speaker 01 Absolutely. Let's do it.
37:31 Alie Ward? But first, as always, let's take a little break to scatter some money into the winds toward a worthy cause. And this week, Dr. Cancellare chose aptly the Snow Leopard Trust, which aims to better understand the endangered snow leopard and to protect the cat in partnership with the communities that share its habitats by partnering with indigenous peoples and local communities living across this vast, mountainous landscape. And you can see snowleopard.org for more info on their work, as well as updated news and pictures and stories about snow leopards, in case you like gorgeous, elusive, furry, lethal cuties that go exceptionally hard. So thank you to Imogen for that recommendation. Thanks to sponsors who make it possible to donate to a cause each week. How's your ponytail looking?
38:16 Alie Ward? Maybe like a little thinner than it used to. We've talked about this in our menopause episode. At some point, it's bound to happen to all of us. So if you're ready for thicker, fuller hair, start your free online visit today at forhers.com/ologies for personalized care. So that's F O R H E R S dot com slash ologies. Individual results may vary. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform. Whether you're trying to grow a business you have
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39:43 Alie Ward? use offer code OLOGIES to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You can do it.
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41:14 Alie Ward? Okay, let's get our huge paws into the mailbag for listener questions submitted before we record via patreon.com/ologies, where you can also support the show for as little as $1 a month. We love you for that. And people love cats. I love that people love cats and love you. Okay, a few people had paws questions. Lisa Gorman wanted to know what big cat has the biggest paw size for its body size? They feel like both lynx and snow leopards have very big paws. And then Miriam, first-time question asker, Taleila and JJ all asked about toe beans. And whether or not they have toe beans and if they are squishy like a house cat's. Just a quick pause.
41:56 Alie Ward? If you need the full version of Toe Beans by Fur Life, sung to the tune of Dolly Parton's "Jolene", we will link the YouTube on our website so you can get it stuck in your head and you can sing it to your cat daily like our editor Mercedes Maitland does. Back to cat feet.
42:11 Speaker 01 First and foremost and most important, yes, all cats have toe beans and all toe beans are perfect. I have touched the toe beans of an anesthetized or surgically asleep bobcat. I have also touched the toe beans of a tiger in a captive setting when it was also anesthetized. They're much rougher than our domestic cats.
42:34 Alie Ward? Okay.
42:34 Speaker 01 They're a lot more calloused feeling. They're not exactly as hard as dog pads are, but they're a little bit closer. I don't think snow leopards have pink toe pads. They're all going to be like this gray, black toe pad. Let's see, the other question was about the biggest size of the feet relative to body size.
42:52 Alie Ward? Yeah.
42:52 Speaker 01 Yes, the Canada lynx is definitely going to probably have the biggest sized foot relative to its body as well as the snow leopard. So the Canada lynx, their feet, we call them snowshoes. They literally have built-in snowshoes. Like, you know, we would have snowshoes and we would go hiking in the snow. Theirs are built into their bodies and that allows them to float on top of snowy environments. Same with the snow leopard. Cats in the genus lynx, there are four of them. There's the Canada lynx, the North American bobcat, there's the Iberian lynx and the Eurasian lynx. All four of them have, you know, this shortened tail and different from a snow leopard, which spends a lot of time running down mountains when it's tracking its prey. These Canada lynx are after smaller prey items, often snowshoe hairs,
43:36 Speaker 01 and they need to be able to jump really high. And so having really powerful hind legs with really big snowshoes is a way that they're able to be successful in that environment. That's a great question. Thank you.
43:46 Alie Ward? Well, on the topic of tails, Kelly Shaver and Brain Shenanigans wanted to know what's up with their tails. Kelly says, I've heard they're crazy strong and dexterous. Brain wanted to know if they're used for balance. And then Anna Guzman, Mathilde Lepi and Charlotte Felkgaard wanted to know about lynxes. Mathilde asked, why do lynxes have such a short tail? Why do they have the stumpy ones? So why, what are they using, what are these big cats using their tails for? And how do some get along without them?
44:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, so that's, that's a phenomenal question. It all comes back to these evolutionary adaptations. And I'm so fascinated with the way carnivores in general are adapted to their environments. But also like as a wildcat enthusiast, yes, these are all great questions because it really points out just interesting ways that they interact with their environment. All cats with tails, they use their tails for balance, to help them turn in different directions. And also they use them as cues to indicate their mood consciously, but also I think subconsciously in some ways. And so my favorite example of the way cats use their tails is with both snow leopards and cheetahs. If you've ever seen a video of a cheetah running across, you know, the Serengeti, it is arguably one of the most beautiful things that you could ever watch.
44:56 Alie Ward? So if you like the Olympics, you will love cheetah videos. Imagine the architecture of a four-legged ballerina with an arched back, lithe muscle and long back legs so fast that they meet the front legs in a galloping blur. They can go up to 65 miles an hour, faster than my hybrid on an LA on-ramp. Power steering also comes standard.
45:22 Speaker 01 But in addition to being really, really fast, cheetahs also have to change directions incredibly fast. And so their prey, in order to try to outrun them, is not only very fast, but they're also zigzagging really quickly. And so the way that cheetahs are able to maintain that speed is they use their tail like a boat rudder. And so cheetahs operate their tails in exactly the same way, where they will flick their tail back and forth very quickly to allow them to do these, you know, forty-five, ninety-degree, one-hundred-and-eighty-degree pivots while still maintaining their speed. And snow leopards certainly do the same thing. Their tails are the full length of their body. They have the longest tail relative to their body of any of the other cats. And they use their tails in the same way as
46:03 Speaker 01 a rudder to help them maintain speed, but also accurate precision in their directional change when they're, you know, running down mountains after their prey. In the case of snow leopards, however, their tails are the full length of their body because they can also use them as a scarf when they are sleeping in the snow, which is quite adorable.
46:22 Alie Ward? Oh, that's so cute.
46:23 Speaker 01 And I think I forgot to answer a question. There was one more. Oh, the question about shorter tails.
46:28 Alie Ward? Yeah.
46:29 Speaker 01 I think the answer comes down to hunting adaptation. So all cats are, and most carnivores are ambush predators, meaning they are engaging in some type of stalking and being still as they are trying to get close enough to something to ambush it, to basically explode through this, you know, high-speed chase to actually capture and subdue their prey. And so in the case of some of these, some of these smaller cats, like in the cases of lynx, they're pretty generalist hunters. They will take a lot of different prey items. So they'll, a lot of small mammals, smaller birds, and being able to skulk low to the ground while also maintaining, like, being able to explode with speed. They don't really
47:09 Speaker 01 need to change direction in the same way that a larger cat hunting a larger species would. And so having really, really powerful hind legs is one reason I think that maybe they have lost their tails, or it's just not, it's not, it's not needed. And you know, in terms of domestic cats, like I had said earlier, I have a cat here at home, a domestic cat called a Manks, that she does not have a tail. It is a genetic thing. It is a, it is a specific breed that they don't have these tails. And all of these cats, from a domestic standpoint, they can have differing levels of spinal vertebrae. So like my little cat, she only has like, I think, maybe two vertebrae popping out from her pelvis, like where the tail would begin, and that's it.
47:52 Speaker 01 And I don't really see that in the wild cats. Like, theirs tends to be a lot more consistent than in domestic cats. And I think that just has to do with, like, some inbreeding.
48:02 Alie Ward? You mentioned tails as scarves, and Mouse Paxton wonders, know, why do snow leopards hold their tails in their mouths? So did Pafka34, Rebecca Fitchell, Peter Hawkins. I had no idea that they do that. They chew on their own tails?
48:19 Speaker 01 They do hold their tails. They don't exactly chew on them. So I think what they're referring to is we've seen that in captive snow leopards. Like, you can literally Google it and find an adorable photo of a snow leopard holding its tail, almost like a stuffed animal.
48:32 Alie Ward? Mm-hmm.
48:33 Speaker 01 I know that young cubs certainly probably chase their tails. They certainly attack their mothers' tails.
48:39 Alie Ward? No.
48:40 Speaker 01 You know, and all play serves a purpose. Like, animals play, but they're playing because it develops important skills: stalking, ambushing, balance, you know, et cetera, and then also, like, social cues. And so certainly, I think, part of the reason that they grab their tails has to do with some of that leftover behavior. But we see it most often in a captive setting, and I think some of it has to do with they're just bored.
49:00 Alie Ward? Okay.
49:01 Speaker 01 And they're not eating, they're not eating their tails. They're just kind of holding them, because, why not?
49:05 Alie Ward? It's something to do. It's a fidget spinner for them.
49:09 Speaker 01 They do. Yes, exactly. They have a built-in fidget spinner, so they don't need thumbs.
49:13 Alie Ward? And if you need a deeper dive on this, there's a 2025 article by Elisma Brits titled, "Why Do Snow Leopards Bite Their Tails? Surprising Reasons." And it mentions that, yes, wild snow leopards also do this when resting or when stressed because they fumbled their prey. It's like drowning your sorrows in your own tail. But in environments that- Can reach 40 degrees below. Stuffing the furry rope made out of yourself in your mouth can help heat up air before it hits nasal passages. By the way, how are they even surviving at that altitude from a respiratory standpoint? So the percentage of oxygen in the air is the same, even if you're atop Kilimanjaro.
49:57 Alie Ward? But the air is thinner due to lower atmospheric pressure. So you're getting less oxygen per breath. So how does one survive? I don't know, because I don't study this shit. So I consulted the 2015 study titled genetically based low oxygen affinities of felid hemoglobins. Lack of biochemical adaptation to high altitude hypoxia on the snow leopard. Reported that researchers believe, they believe, snow leopards compensate for the poor oxygen capacity of their blood by simply breathing harder. And thus they survive well in this high altitude habitat. But one author on this study noted at the end with like the hint of exasperation. Quote, "We still don't know how snow leopards adapt to high altitudes.
50:43 Alie Ward? Our study raised more questions than it answered." Which sounds like they need to stuff a snow leopard tail in their mouth for some self-soothing. Well, you mentioned something about growing up and as a snow leopard, Reese Perini wanted to know, how do they live in such harsh and dangerous environments? Peter Henkens had that question too. But Reese Perini wanted to know, what does a good mom do to teach their babies how to survive and hunt on the sides of cliffs? How do they do it? Jennifer Gordon wants to know why they're so bouncy. They act like they have springs and rubber in their legs. But yeah, how are they learning how to survive on the side of cliffs and bounce around being so cute?
51:20 Speaker 01 So like with all cats, the cubs spend a long period of time with their mothers. So most larger cats are spending a minimum of 12 months with their mothers. Sometimes up to 18 months. Usually the males, the young males tend to leave their mother earlier because they just like can't wait to break out in the world and the females tend to stay a little bit longer. The, the way that they're able to be successful is trial and error, watching mom, but then also having supervised hunting. First they're fed by mom, then they watch mom, then sometimes they are helping mom, then they are inevitably occasionally hunting on their own, but as they're young, they're not that successful. So they come back home and they've got a seasoned hunter who is their mom, who is
52:05 Speaker 01 not just providing their diet at this point, but augmenting it. They're having the ability to fail through guidance under, you know, under their mother. And this process, again, it does take about 12 months because they have to be adult size before they're even going to be able to take down their prey. A lot of snow leopard prey is, is much larger in both size and weight than they are. And a lot of their prey is very dangerous because they have very, very large horns. And then when you add to it, the danger of running down a mountain, certainly there are snow leopards, both young snow leopards and old snow leopards that do not survive hunting attempts, either because they are gored by the animal they're hunting, like a markhor is a really, really large sheep that has horns that are like longer than my arm.
52:50 Alie Ward? Oh God.
52:51 Speaker 01 But also sometimes like they miscalculate and they slip and they fall. And so I think it's pretty likely that even though snow leopards are successful in these really harsh environments, they also do get injured a lot. Like I think it's pretty unlikely that a snow leopard goes through its life without having several ribs broken because they are literally being thrown against rocks as they are trying to bring down their large prey items.
53:13 Alie Ward? Oh my God. And I'm like, it's, that ice is not forgiving. It can look fluffy, but it's a, those, it's, and everything is so much steeper than you can probably possibly even fathom, right?
53:27 Speaker 01 You know, I've seen a snow leopard in the summer in China when it was like 50 degrees out and that is way too hot for a snow leopard. They were not having a good time.
53:35 Alie Ward? Yeah.
53:36 Speaker 01 You know, it's like a husky, right? Like people have huskies that just like lie down in the snow and stay there all day. Snow leopards are a hundred percent the same way.
53:42 Alie Ward? And while there are somewhere between 3,000 and 7,000 snow leopards left in the wild, there are over 500 in zoos. None of those zoos are on a mountaintop at 20,000 feet. So how do they cope? Not just with the lack of hunting, the ennui of daily room service, and the glare of the public eye, but also with these increasingly hot temperatures. So I looked into this and one zookeeper reported that in the summer, the snow leopards are given access to AC, shade, pools, and misters. Kind of like if you lived in Florida. Well, a few people, Janelle, Esmond, Brain again, Quincy, Robisho, and Rachel May. Quincy and Rachel wanted to know, just why are they so cute? And I think we know that.
54:26 Alie Ward? But Janelle and Brain wanted to know, are they as soft and fluffy as they look?
54:32 Speaker 01 I have not touched a snow leopard. So at the Woodland Park Zoo, I did get to see very close. Their adult female had three cubs, and so I got to see them fairly up close. Their fur is similar to both tigers and bobcats in that it's not as silky as some of our house cats are. And that's because they often have a double coat. They need to have a coat that allows them to maintain that warmth, to protect that warmth. And their undercoat is going to be a lot denser and thicker than their top coat. And they're able to trap air in between those two layers that helps them maintain their warmth. And as a result, their fur tends to be a little bit longer.
55:14 Speaker 01 Certainly with the snow leopard, their fur is a little bit longer than our domestic cat. And it's also a little bit more coarse. But it still has a nice fluffiness to it. And a lot of cats are that way as well.
55:25 Alie Ward? But it's not like a stuffed animal?
55:27 Speaker 01 It's not like a stuffed animal, unfortunately. Although I do agree, they are absolutely, I mean, all cats are adorable. Some might be more adorable than others. I do certainly think that the snow leopard is the most beautiful. It's very ethereal.
55:40 Alie Ward? Snow leopards are also called ghost cats. So put that in your crossword and smoke it.
55:45 Speaker 01 Their eyes are different colors relative to all the other cats.
55:48 Alie Ward? What color are their eyes?
55:50 Speaker 01 They have this like beautiful greenish yellow eye. A lot of the wild cats have these like brownish gold eyes. But snow leopards tend to have like a very greenish yellow, almost not exactly blue, but like a more aquamarine color that tends to really just glow a lot. And they're quite beautiful.
56:09 Alie Ward? Amanda Lask, Sarah E. G., Kim, Justin Maples, and Xena wanted to ask a vocalization question I should have thought of earlier. Do they meow? Do any of the big cats meow?
56:20 Speaker 01 Yes, cheetahs meow.
56:21 Alie Ward? Oh.
56:21 Speaker 01 Well, cheetahs do a chirping. It's a very high pitched.
56:28 Speaker 01 It almost is very bird like. So it depends on what they're talking to. So most adult females of all species for the cats, like including the big ones like the tigers, they will have this kind of like high pitched chirping that they use when they're calling their kittens. When female cats are in heat, they tend to have like this type of like higher pitched, oh, God, squawking. That sounds kind of like demoralizing. It's not exactly a squawk. It's more of, it is, well, you know, it is kind of squawky, like bobcat, female bobcats, when they are in heat, they make this sound that sounds like someone, a human screaming, blood curdling scream, screaming for her life.
57:13 Speaker 01 That's not cute at all. It's terrifying in the woods at 2:00 a.m., especially if you don't know what it is. And that's how I learned that bobcats make that sound in heat when I was a kid.
57:22 Alie Ward? Oh, my God.
57:24 Speaker 01 But all cats will do that, like mountain lions will do that as well. It's like this kind of squawking chirping type sound. A little bit different than a true meow. Most cats spend the majority of their time alone.
57:34 Alie Ward? Okay. They don't necessarily need to be communicating with a lot of other people around them to say, where's my snacks?
57:42 Speaker 01 Right. They're communicating with poop versus meows.
57:44 Alie Ward? Yes. That makes tons of sense. Daniel Johnson and Willow, as well as Wynne and Michelle Ring, wanted to know about lions, female lions. Willow wanted to know, why do lions have a mane? And then Wynne and Michelle wanted to know, what's the deal with female lions that grow manes or do male behavior? Wynne says icons.
58:04 Speaker 04 Love. Love.
58:05 Alie Ward? So how, what is going on with manes and sexual dimorphism in lions?
58:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, so lions are definitely different than all of the rest of the big cats, specifically because the females live in groups throughout their entire life with one or two males together. They're all called a pride. So behaviorally, they're already very, they're more dog-like in that way compared to the rest of the cats. But in terms of the sexual dimorphism, the mane is thought to be an indication of fitness.
58:34 Alie Ward? Oh.
58:34 Speaker 01 So males that are more dominant, it's not so much the size of the mane, although that is a factor. It seems that the color is also incredibly important. More dominant males have larger manes and darker colored manes. And they tend to maintain their territories better than males that just don't have those manes. And I don't know if that's explicitly linked to like testosterone, you know, that is driving those secondary sex characteristics like we see so often in mammals. Certainly it has to be related to it in some capacity. But then when it comes to females that are potentially growing manes, I think that probably has to do with a response to either males losing control of their pride.
59:13 Alie Ward? Wow.
59:13 Speaker 01 Meaning that either they've gotten too old, a competing male has come in.
59:18 Alie Ward? So you want to get yourself a look at the 2016 paper, Rare Observation of the Existence and Masculine Behavior of Mained Lioness in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, in the African Journal of Ecology, which notes that potential factors driving mane development in male lions are thought to include genetics, temperature, nutritional status, hormones, and veg- ...situation thickness. And then you can follow that paper up with Discover Magazine's 2022 piece titled, "It's Rare, But A Lioness Can Grow A Main," which dished that Avis, a 16-year-old male lion at the Topeka Zoo, passed away due to old age. And a few months later, his geriatric 18-year-old female counterpart, Zuri, began growing a mane.
1:00:03 Alie Ward? And it's most likely due to raised testosterone after Avis's death. Now, Shanna Simpson is a curator at the zoo and told Discover Magazine that, yes, this can happen in a scarcity of male lions because it's the male's responsibility to act as security for the pride while the female's duties are to hunt and take care of the young. So, yeah, a tried lioness can be gender fluid when the conditions are right for her.
1:00:29 Speaker 01 But I would imagine, like we see in fish communities, there are species of fish where in the absence of a male, a female can actually literally become a reproductive male.
1:00:39 Alie Ward? Wonderful.
1:00:39 Speaker 01 Certainly, that is not the case in mammals. We're not ever going to see like a female lion be able to become an actual biological male to be able to reproduce. But some of those behaviors can serve to like help protect the pride, specifically because roaming males will always try to fight males that have pride because they want to pass on their genes. So if they drive out the existing king, the existing reigning males, then they basically take over the pride and then they become in charge.
1:01:06 Alie Ward? I had no clue. And I do find them to be icons. So our editor, Jake Chaffee's partner, Joey, had a question and wanted to know, quote, "Are any other big cats communists?"
1:01:16 Speaker 01 With regards to the males, cheetahs form what are called coalitions. Sometimes they're related brothers, sometimes they're not. And they tend to just like live together for their entire life in bands of four or five. They don't have a pride, they don't hang out with females year round, but they tend to harass and breed females as a group.
1:01:35 Alie Ward? This is a very serious question. Mish the Fish, Elizabeth Stelle, Dr. Lena Carpenter, Nita Chen, Lauren Cooper would love to know, do they like catnip? Elizabeth asked, do they encounter catnip in the wild and get silly? Any idea?
1:01:49 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:01:50 Alie Ward? I don't know.
1:01:50 Speaker 01 Sort of. So I was in Kyrgyzstan for a conference and a couple big cat scientists. We were on horseback, hiking, you know, riding through these beautiful, beautiful mountains. There's lots of beautiful tall grass. And I started to smell something and I was like, what is that smell that I'm smelling? A smelly smell. It smells smelly. And we basically like rounded the corner of this river and opened up into a meadow that was full of a plant called bee balm. It's something in the mint family, which is just this beautiful, I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful smelling plant. It just looks like these tiny little puff balls.
1:02:28 Speaker 01 But also, we were surrounded by a field of naturally wild growing Hindu Kush marijuana plants.
1:02:39 Speaker 01 And I was just, I don't know, I was like, I was like speechless. I was like, this is a very unique experience and I don't know how to process this experience.
1:02:50 Speaker 01 I think that smells kind of similar to catnip. It does not function in the same way. So catnip, the reason cats love catnip is because it's a psychoactive agent, but it is also a sexual stimulant.
1:03:03 Alie Ward? Oh, it's like a Quaalude. Amazing.
1:03:06 Speaker 01 It's like a Quaalude and yes, and LSD. Like it might not last for very long, but it's like 10 minutes of like you're seeing things and you're feeling things. And it sends them into a frenzy. Now, when I was at the tiger sanctuary in undergrad, we would often try to provide enrichment because they're captive animals, right? Like they have these huge home ranges and they're in like these, you know, small enclosures and, you know, doing our best to maximize the quality of your life. And so a lot of their enrichment involved scent. Some of the cats liked catnip. I wouldn't say they went crazy for catnip. The things that big cats really, really like for some reason, the tigers in particular, they fricking loved a Christmas tree. You throw a whole Christmas tree in there and they would just go bonkers, like rolling around in it, rising around.
1:03:49 Speaker 01 Maybe it's like the tannins or the oils in the pine itself, but they fricking loved it. And what they love even more, and this is across all different big cat species that we've seen in captivity, and it has been used some in the wild, like when we're trying to draw cats in. Cats love. Calvin Klein obsession for men.
1:04:11 Alie Ward? Okay, I have heard that there might be like civet, what is it, what is it called?
1:04:17 Speaker 01 Oh, is it like a gland or something from civet?
1:04:20 Alie Ward? Yeah, is there a scent gland in there?
1:04:23 Speaker 01 I'm not sure exactly what it is about Calvin Klein, but it is something that like the snow leopards go crazy for. I've seen it in captivity. I've seen like the bobcats go bonkers for it. I've seen captive tigers go crazy for it. I mean, they, I mean, they'll kill your mama to get closer to that smell.
1:04:38 Alie Ward? So who's in charge of figuring out what scent would make a tiger want to kill your mother? It turns out it's Pat Thomas, a guy who worked at the Bronx Zoo as the general curator of the Wildlife Conservation Society. So, looking for enrichment options. Pat went out, got a bunch of different perfumes and colognes in 2005, and of all of them, Calvin Klein's obsession for men had these wild animals going feral, rubbing up on it like it was their long lost high school sweetheart. Since then, it's been a staple for biologists who just spritz some obsession on camera traps to lure shy, stealthy cats out of the jungle for their close up. So, one perfumer that was involved in the creation
1:05:24 Alie Ward? of this obsession for men is Anne Gottlieb, who told The Guardian newspaper that the scent is, quote, "combination of this lickable vanilla heart married to this fresh green top note. It creates tension," Anne said. "It also has elements of civetone, which is a synthetic version of a musk harvested from the anal-adjacent glands of a feline-like creature called a civet." So, exercise caution wearing this cologne on a date, especially if that date happens to take place in an Ecuadorian rainforest. I wonder if domestic cats like it. Do you think domestic cats would be like, bring it on?
1:06:06 Speaker 01 You know, I'm gonna go ahead and say yes, because when I was at the Tiger Thanksgiving Show and learned that Calvin Klein obsession for men was like the number one go-to for the tigers, I thought it was hilarious because that's the cologne that my stepdad wore.
1:06:19 Speaker 01 And my cats lived with my parents for like two summers when I was doing fieldwork and they loved my dad. So, yes.
1:06:28 Alie Ward? Oh, my god.
1:06:30 Speaker 01 I'm gonna say they did.
1:06:31 Alie Ward? That's amazing, someone out there. I hope someone does a test on that. And I know we're talking, I know I'm making you talk about domestic cats and wild ones, but.
1:06:40 Speaker 01 That's perfect.
1:06:41 Alie Ward? Era Victor, Lynette Davia, John McGrail, Ashton McCall, Harper Atlas, Cassie Reed, Dean, Wynne, and Amelia Hines. In AJ's words, ask, most importantly, do big cats make biscuits? And can they loaf like a domestic cat?
1:06:56 Speaker 01 Hmm, yes. The loaf is ubiquitous, I think.
1:06:59 Alie Ward? Okay.
1:07:00 Speaker 01 It's a comfort thing, right? Like it's a relaxation technique. I think that overall in the wild, cats will do that less because the loaf is like the pinnacle of relaxation, right? Like they don't need to be on alert. In our house, they're fully relaxed. So I don't think that wild cats do that as much because they have to be ready at a moment's notice for anything, whether that's opportunistic food source, a potential predator, or anything in their environment. They're on more high alert, but yes, they do loaf. And wait, what was the second question?
1:07:28 Alie Ward? Uh, biscuits?
1:07:30 Speaker 01 Yes, they do make biscuits. I have seen videos on camera traps of mountain lions making biscuits. Get this, on fallen trees.
1:07:38 Alie Ward? I wonder why?
1:07:39 Speaker 01 So they're not doing it on soft subject. I think it's mostly because they're using it as it's a communication thing. So we do know that cats, when they will spray urine on like the backs of trees or on the backs of boulders, they will sometimes spray, but then they do what's called, what we call a scrape, where they take their back legs and they basically moonwalk them a little bit back and forth on the ground to leave these linear like ski marks almost. And that is a type of communication. They also will, of course, like they're sharpening their claws on things, but it's more hardcore biscuit making.
1:08:13 Alie Ward? Okay. Oh, might not be a grandma's quilt, but they're out there on a tree doing it.
1:08:17 Speaker 01 They're like literally shredding a tree.
1:08:19 Alie Ward? Yeah. You know, a few people, Ally Brown, Sophia Bustillos, Trevor Ogborne, Greg Wallick, Pavka34, Rachel May, wanted to know, well, Greg asks, even though snow leopards typically aren't aggressive toward humans, can they talk about the skier that got attacked in late January, trying to take a selfie with a snow leopard, maybe some safety guidelines if you see a big cat. Sophia Bustillos asked, if I were to encounter one on a hike, like a mountain lion or something close, how do I defend myself? So yeah, Ally wanted to know, what do you do if you encounter a big cat in the wild?
1:08:51 Speaker 01 These are great questions. I'll comment on the snow leopard in the news first. So in late January, a skier in northern China saw a snow leopard on the side of the road, got out of her vehicle or was already on foot, I'm not exactly sure. She approached the snow leopard and was able to get very close to it. She wanted to take a selfie with that cat, and unfortunately, that cat attacked her. It bit her neck or her face and then kind of sat on top of her, which was a little bit weird. So that's a really unique situation, not just because unfortunately, it was human initiated, which is obviously always a problem. The underlying message that I will always reiterate is that we should never approach wild animals, and we should definitely never approach something that can hurt us, you know, and that definitely includes big cats as predators.
1:09:35 Alie Ward? Just a heads up, she survived the crush of the leopard's jaw thanks to her ski helmet. But there is a very willy-inducing video of her being led away from the scene. She's copping her face, which is gushing blood.
1:09:49 Speaker 01 In this particular case, what was notable about the attack is that prior to this, there are no known documented attacks by a snow leopard on a human. Individual people make poor decisions, like this skier did. She definitely made a poor decision. But snow leopards are also just very tolerant of people. Unfortunately, when we do see these instances of a big cat attacking a person, it is often because the person was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And we're seeing increasing examples where young animals or starving animals are seeking food in unusual, uncharacteristic sources. We are seeing cases where young mountain lions are attacking people. And oftentimes, unfortunately,
1:10:30 Speaker 01 when that animal is often captured and killed as a result of attacking a human, we often find that these animals are starving. And so they are doing this as a last ditch effort. It is not something that we are not normal food sources for any of the big cats. Now, certainly, of course, there are stories of like, you know, the man eating tigers in certain parts of India, and those are individuals that have become fixated on people. And those animals obviously pose a significant safety risk. And unfortunately, they do need to be removed because it poses such a significant human risk.
1:11:02 Alie Ward? Side note, this is not a super new phenomenon, but it is relatively rare, especially considering that the tiger's numbers used to be potentially in the tens or hundreds of thousands before 1875, when 80,000 of them were slaughtered by bullets and steel traps over just a few decades. So with only around 5,000 left in the wild today, around 50 humans are killed by them each year. But well over 300 people are trampled by elephants. But many of the tiger attacks on humans come from proximity. People are encroaching further and further into their habitat and also decimating what would be the tiger's prey otherwise.
1:11:46 Alie Ward? Now, I don't know what your deal is, but if you can't get enough of tigers eating people, you may want to thumb through a book called The Man-eaters of Kuman, the 1944 memoir by Jim Corbett, who was a naturalist and a tiger hunter. And yes, the term man eater, it's problematic on so many fronts, not the least of them sexism, but also it's got a lot of colonialist overtones. But Corbett's book apparently includes many tales of such attacks, including a tigress who killed over 400 people. They found out later that it was mainly because she had been shot in the mouth and couldn't
1:12:26 Alie Ward? use her teeth to full capacity, but could still gnaw on slow, squishy people. And I get it, were probably delicious. Also, even if they were just pissed at humans, I would get it. I would be like, you know what, justified. And while I cannot personally endorse this book, because sad, scary, I hear it does conclude with Jim's assertion that he would rather photograph than shoot the tigers. Now, more recently, from 2016 to 2018, there was a female tiger in India named T1, and she had two cubs, and the three of them were responsible for over a dozen human deaths.
1:13:06 Alie Ward? And authorities insisted that she had, quote, "developed a taste for human flesh." She evades traps. She learns her potential assassin's tricks. She's on the loose for years. What could they do? One 2018 NPR piece titled Calvin Klein's Obsession Could Be The Trick To Catching A Tiger laid out that they were going to try the cologne, but it was another two years before T1 was shot lurking near a farmer's market. Now, how can you avoid being a kitty cat treat?
1:13:38 Speaker 01 The most important thing for big cats is to make eye contact, because if they know that you can see them, that is going to change their behavior.
1:13:47 Alie Ward? Oh.
1:13:48 Speaker 01 You also need to get big. So if you see a mountain lion, it's OK to make eye contact. You also yell at it. You throw your hands up in the air. If you can safely grab something without bending over for too long or turning your back, you throw something at it.
1:14:02 Alie Ward? Oh, OK. Wow.
1:14:04 Speaker 01 That's not the same for all species, right? So like, we certainly hear a lot about the difference between like, certain brown bears or brown bears versus black bears. Like, you don't make eye contact with a brown bear because they're incredibly aggressive. But I don't think that making eye contact versus not making eye contact is going to help in the case of like, a tiger. Because they're so large, they're a little bit different in their ambush ability. Like, they're so big, they're just really not afraid of anything. But a mountain lion, which is probably what we're most likely to see, listeners are most likely to encounter, or even maybe a leopard or a jaguar, making eye contact and being big and yelling and not backing down is the most important thing. It is really important to, people always worry about the claws.
1:14:45 Speaker 01 Obviously, I would be worried about them too. But you also need to worry about the mouth because the mouth is what is going to be the most dangerous part. And so basically fighting back a hundred percent is what you need. Like at this point, if you were to come into close contact with a cat, lying down and being small is not going to work in your favor. You're going to have to get into a fistfight with that cat.
1:15:04 Alie Ward? Wow.
1:15:05 Speaker 01 Thankfully, mountain lions do not view us as something that they can easily take down.
1:15:09 Alie Ward? Okay, that's good.
1:15:11 Speaker 01 So I will say, if you're ever out in the woods, and this happened to me several years ago. I was in California, we were doing some camera trapping work. I'm looking down, I'm walking through the sand, and all of a sudden I see a cat track. And I stopped dead, I was like, that is not a bobcat. That is definitely a mountain lion. And I reached down to grab my bear spray because it's a great way to protect yourself. And I realized that my bear spray is in the truck.
1:15:34 Alie Ward? Oh, no.
1:15:36 Speaker 01 So I bend down and I grab a rock and I just keep walking. And then I see a second set of prints. And this track is like three times the size of the first one that I saw. And I said, oh, God, this is an adult mountain lion with a teenage cub.
1:15:49 Alie Ward? Oh, my God.
1:15:50 Speaker 01 This is not, this is unilaterally not great, guys. And the cats' tracks were going in the opposite direction, which means we had passed right by them and not known it on this little old like trail road. Thankfully, I wasn't alone, but we're like, you know what? We are either going to get eaten or we're not. And all of a sudden, all of the the ground squirrels and the tree squirrels just start going bonkers. They're making all of this noise. They were not talking about us. They were a hundred percent talking about the carnivores that had been walking away from us, had gotten to our truck, saw the truck, didn't like it because truck, human, bad. And they had turned around and walked the other way, which meant they were walking directly towards us.
1:16:33 Alie Ward? Oh, no.
1:16:34 Speaker 01 So not only had we walked past them without knowing, but we were then walking towards each other. And the the the birds are making a lot of noise. And all of a sudden, the bushes on either side of us exploded. Like two bushes, left side of the road, right side of the boat, explode, explode. We didn't ever see a single thing, but we knew that we had somehow startled both the mountain lions and we had split up mom and baby, and that's even worse.
1:16:58 Alie Ward? Oh, my God.
1:17:01 Speaker 01 And so we basically, we did not run, you know, you just don't run, but you just walk, walk softly and carry a big stick, or in this case, a rock, and look over each other's backs. But if the hair on the back of your neck stands up, or the squirrels and the birds start like angrily calling, that means there is a carnivore in the immediate vicinity and you need to look up and look around.
1:17:24 Alie Ward? Oh, my God. When you got to the truck, were you just sweating? Like, wow.
1:17:29 Speaker 01 I was, I, I couldn't decide if I was an idiot because I really wanted to see the mountain lion, or if, you know, if that, I couldn't decide if that was a good mental decision, or not that I really was slightly disappointed that I didn't see a mountain lion, but I was very shocked. And granted, they were not trying to hurt us, but certainly it was just one of those great examples of you have no idea what you're walking past or what is watching you in the woods.
1:17:52 Alie Ward? Ah, which is the thrill of the woods. But it's also good to have bear spray and a rock.
1:17:59 Speaker 01 A hundred percent. Never forget the bear spray. That's pretty good advice.
1:18:03 Alie Ward? You know, unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer around us. And last listener question I wanted to ask is Kelly Shaver wanted to know what's the impact of the new walls and fences along this US southern border on native cats. Cheesemarker wanted to know why are they also endangered? Ashley O'Brien wants to know which big cats are the most endangered. And a lot of folks just want to know, like Emma K, first time question asker, what's the number one thing the average person can do to help support conservation efforts of big cats?
1:18:31 Speaker 01 These are all fantastic questions. And so broadly, the most common threats for all of the wild cats include habitat fragmentation. That fragmentation can either happen through like human development. Mining or agriculture or obviously urban sprawl, but also things like climate change. Climate change is dramatically altering habitats. It's drying up wetlands. It's changing snow patterns. It's shrinking their habitats. And so these animals are having more difficult times meeting their resource needs because their prey is moving in response to that habitat changes as well. Poaching remains a significant issue for a lot of different cats in a lot of different parts of the world. The wildlife trade market is
1:19:12 Speaker 01 the second most prolific underground market in the world, second to like drug trafficking.
1:19:18 Alie Ward? Wow.
1:19:18 Speaker 01 And so there is a lot of demand for cats and certainly taking cats for their pelts and for like, you know, alternative medicine is illegal in most parts of the world, but that does not stop poaching efforts. And so in particular, like as, as tigers, our populations are dwindling, the focus is shifting from tigers to like clouded leopards in terms of taking them for their parts. And so we're seeing that kind of trickle down effect on lots of different species. And in the case of creating barriers to their habitat, that's a significant problem. But the question with regards to like border walls, expanding them, population connectivity is being dramatically impacted by expanding these border walls. Completely obliterating habitat, which means prey items are not sticking around there,
1:20:01 Speaker 01 which means predators are not able to meet their resource needs there. But then it's also creating impermeable barriers.
1:20:06 Alie Ward? Imagie notes that individual cats can get stuck in fencing, but on a greater scale, these artificial borders limit breeding and gene flow, which compromises the genetic health of wild populations, which is of course, one of Dr. Kinselare's research focuses.
1:20:22 Speaker 01 So if mountain lions on the border with Mexico are not doing well, inevitably, eventually that's going to negatively impact mountain lions in Texas, New Mexico, and traveling all the way up to California. Everything is connected in an ecosystem. And when one thing is negatively impacted, the broader community is also going to be negatively impacted.
1:20:39 Alie Ward? And the mega felines in the most danger are the Amur leopard, the Sumatran tiger, and the South China tiger, the latter of which hasn't been spotted for over 40 years and researchers think is most likely extinct. Now, the Iberian lynx, not technically a big cat, is also at high risk of extinction. So this is what many researchers would call a bummer.
1:21:02 Speaker 01 And so it's really hard. It's really hard for us. If we care about cats or care about an individual, individual species, how do we make a positive impact on? An individual species or a, you know, a population or a suite of species as a whole. Like if you care about big cats, what are the things that you can do? I think if the most important thing that we can remember is that humans and wildlife are inextricably linked in one way or another. And so we can't successfully combat issues with conservation if we're not also caring about people. And that means either helping people meet their needs. Like if a cat is killing their livestock, how do we make sure that those people are able to recoup that loss without hurting the cat itself?
1:21:45 Speaker 01 But also when it comes to like social injustice, we can't care about animals and not care about the people that live alongside them.
1:21:52 Alie Ward? Right, yeah.
1:21:53 Speaker 01 And so it's incredibly important that if we are, if you care about a tiger, you better have a global mindset.
1:21:58 Alie Ward? Yeah.
1:21:59 Speaker 01 You, you can't live in the United States and be like, man, I frickin' love lions. I think leopards are amazing and turn your nose up at like different cultures in Central Asia. Or think that things that are happening on the news don't matter or that it's apolitical. Everything is political. And so having that global mindset is so incredibly important. It's important how we interact with people, but it's also really directly related to how we are able to be successful in conservation because the borders that we're talking about, like a snow leopard doesn't know when it's in Russia versus China. You know, a bobcat doesn't know if it is in Montana or if it's in Wyoming.
1:22:34 Alie Ward? Yeah.
1:22:35 Speaker 01 And a mountain lion has no idea what Texas is. It has no idea what Mexico is. We do, but those are all artificial constructs. And I know that sounds philosophical and I know that might seem like it's strained from wildlife, but that's incredibly important. And so in my case, as a researcher, I'm a Western American researcher who spent a lot of time in Central Asia. And I feel really strongly that like I was a guest researcher, like it was my PhD and really proud of it. But I also was a guest researcher alongside curdies researchers, Uzbek researchers, Chinese researchers, Russian researchers. And those are the people who are the stewards of the species that I was studying because it lived in their country, not mine.
1:23:08 Alie Ward? Mm-hmm.
1:23:09 Speaker 01 And so centering those voices and increasing that collaborative potential is how we support conservation. And obviously dollars matter. And so if you want to give your dollars to an organization, an organization that works on the ground with wildlife, but works on the ground with people who live alongside wildlife is very important.
1:23:27 Alie Ward? What is the, what's the hardest part about working with big cats?
1:23:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I think the thing that's, one thing that's tough is getting people to agree to share data. And so if you're trying to ask these big scale questions about species that are crossing borders, collaboration is so incredibly important. But because we're dealing with people, we're dealing with governments, we're dealing with like political infrastructure, like it's hard. But certainly, anti carnivore semanticism is so prevalent in so many parts of the world, which is why we have so few large carnivores in the United States in particular, and in lots of Europe. They've all been extirpated, they've been driven out. Everyone hates a carnivore. Everyone, I will say, people like cats more than they like dogs, but like the wolf is the poster child of just being hated.
1:24:15 Alie Ward? Yeah.
1:24:16 Speaker 01 Why are people killing them? We have to make it not the only option. And so conservation is about people. And that's a good thing, but it also can be kind of annoying, too.
1:24:24 Alie Ward? Right, right. It's so much of wildlife historically has been like, what is the intersection of humans and the species, instead of what is best for the species, of course.
1:24:34 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
1:24:35 Alie Ward? What about your, I mean, how do you even decide? But what is your favorite thing about big cats?
1:24:41 Speaker 01 I think for me, it's just, I'm gonna make a bold statement, everything about wild cats is so much better than every other carnivore.
1:24:49 Speaker 01 I know we're not supposed to anthropomorphize, but I think it's okay to do it in this context. They are just, they're so audacious in everything that they do. Everything about them is like balls to the wall, right? Like all of their adaptations, their size, the way their teeth work, the way their eyes work, the speeds that they can run, the environments that they're willing to navigate, the prey that they're willing to take, and then the way that they look. And then, but also in the few times that I've had interactions with wild cats, like for live trapping, you know, we do let them go, we're not killing them. All of these cats, they're just ready to go. Like, they will kill your entire lineage. They'll, they'll go through your whole family and they won't feel bad about it. And I just have so much
1:25:30 Speaker 01 respect for how incredibly grumpy and audacious and badass cats are. That's my professional opinion.
1:25:37 Alie Ward? They have a moxie and a self-possession that we all can aspire to, I believe.
1:25:42 Speaker 01 I was gonna say, I wish that I was that cool.
1:25:44 Alie Ward? Yeah. And since I have a lot of family in Montana, we made a plan to meet in three dimensions.
1:25:50 Speaker 01 Let's go on a hike, we'll find some cat tracks, we can look at animal poop together, and maybe pick some huckleberries.
1:25:56 Alie Ward? I'm there.
1:25:57 Speaker 01 And yes, if you have questions about poop, you can send those to me as well. I don't just do cat poop, I do lots of different poop.
1:26:03 Speaker 06 I'll bring the gloves.
1:26:05 Speaker 01 Non-human, non-human. Let me go ahead and clarify that.
1:26:10 Speaker 06 It's a good clarification.
1:26:11 Speaker 01 Although we did get a sample, we did get a sample from my dissertation that was, um, someone picked up human poop.
1:26:17 Speaker 06 Oh, without realizing it?
1:26:20 Speaker 01 Yep, without realizing it. I don't know if it was me. I mean, we, we just go ahead. I was in charge. Let's just say it was me, you know, I might as well take the fall for that one.
1:26:27 Speaker 06 You picked it up.
1:26:30 Speaker 06 Oh my God, this is amazing. You are the best. Thank you so much.
1:26:36 Speaker 01 Ally, thank you for having me.
1:26:39 Alie Ward? So ask feline people feeble questions because how else are you supposed to learn that you can do breakthrough research with a turd in a glove? Dr. Imogene Cancellare, thank you for being here and to follow her on social media, you can look for her at the handle @biologistimogene on Blue Sky and Instagram. Also, if you just heard a little bit of a jingle, that was Grammy's caller. We're hanging out while I record this. Also, Imogene is on LinkedIn, and she posted that after federal budget cuts, her last position was prematurely terminated. And so she is actively seeking a permanent position in the wildlife field.
1:27:20 Alie Ward? And as a conservation biologist, she has over a decade of experience with NGOs, government agencies, and international research, and is looking for program management positions in wildlife biology. So hit her up. She's a rare gem and also an amazing science communicator. You can find us at Ologies on Blue Sky and Instagram, and I'm at Ally Ward on both. We have shorter, kid-friendly, and classroom-safe versions of Ologies called Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S. I can never do that in one take, but whatever. And Smologies are in their own feed wherever you get podcasts. Ologies merch is available at ologiesmerch.com. You can join our Patreon and support the show for a dollar at patreon.com/ologies.
1:28:04 Alie Ward? Erin Talbert admins the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kellyard Dwyer does the website. Noelle Dilworth tracks down our calendar as scheduling producer. Susan Hale scales summits every week as managing director. And the sonic roars of editor Jake Chaffee and lead editor. Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio could be heard for thousands of miles. Nick Thorburn chirped the theme music. And if you stick around to the very end, you know, I may tell you a secret. This week, I love daylight savings. I love when it gets darker later, partly because I feel like you go for a walk or a jog and there's reduced risk of a man jumping out of the bushes. And honestly, you might be like, what? Don't worry about that.
1:28:48 Alie Ward? And I agree with you not to worry about it too much, but I, one of the last times I went for a jog, a man did jump out of the bushes, saying that he could like punch me if he wanted. And I was like, please don't. And then it was fine. I just like it being dark later on. I think it's a vibe. And it's such a bummer because it seems like when I was a kid, it stayed lighter later in the summer. And I was like lamenting that once that, you know, when I was a kid, it just, it seemed like the day never ended and that was so great. And then I realized that I live in LA, but I grew up in Northern California. And the reality is it did get darker later because I was more north. Duh.
1:29:29 Alie Ward? I'm like 400 miles south in latitude from where I grew up. So yeah, if you live in LA, it does get darker earlier. It's not just the march of time, but it is nostalgic either way. Go watch a sunset. It's free and it's nice. All right. Bye bye.
1:30:05 Speaker 02 You can call me Big Cat.
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Previous Allergology (ALLERGIES) with Zachary Rubin Next Nudibranchology (GLAMOROUS SEA SLUGS) with Jessica Goodheart and Terry Gosliner Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
