Meet Mongolia's Known Snow Leopards

With our recent success in collaring another male snow leopard, we wanted to reintroduce you to the snow leopards who’ve made an appearance near our base camp in South Gobi, Mongolia. For more information (including photos) of these cats, visit our Meet the Cats page.

Snow Leopards We Are Tracking

Aztai (Lucky)– a male, probably 4-5 years old. He was collared in August 2008 about 250 meters from Base Camp. He weighed 36.5 kg at that time. In June 2009, we changed his collar, and he weighed 42 kg. In February 2010, Aztai weighed 44.5 kg. Aztai stays quite calm during collaring, keeping his cool. Last summer, Orjan managed to get within 15 meters from him undetected when he (Aztai) was lying down, licking his paws. When Orjan approaches him, he usually lays still and settles for shooting meaningful glares at Orjan, as if he is giving “the evil eye.” Aztai lives in the area surrounding Base Camp. He used to squeeze out a territory in between Bayartai and Tsagaan, but when Bayartai died, Aztai took over his area.

Bayartai (Go with joy) (aka Longtail) was a big male, weighing about 45 kg. He was collared in September 2008 and killed by a herder while raiding livestock in December 2008.

Tsagaan (White) is another big male, weighing about 43 kg. He was collared in February 2009. Since then we have performed two check-ups on him. One can always tell if it is Tsagaan nearby, because he growls at you when you are about 50 meters away. He displays his feelings in a very clear way. Tsagaan’s collars have transmitted intermittently; we don’t know too much about him now, but we’ll learn more when we collect his collar and download it manually. His home range borders Aztai’s, and it seems as if they patrol the border intensively.

Shonkhor (Falcon) was collared in April 2009, weighing 34 kg. We think that he was almost two years old at that time and had recently separated from his mother. He is a cautious fellow. He has made several short expeditions out from Toson Bumba, the small mountain range that he inhabits but never stays away for more than two days before he returns. When he is photographed, he rapidly moves away–unlike many of the other cats that often don’t care about the camera or even show curiosity. In June 2009 Shonkhor killed a big Argali male.

Saikhan (Beautiful) was collared in May 2009, weighing 33 kg. He was collared in the same area as Shonkhor and the two has traveled together for short periods. We think that the two of them might be brothers. Saikhan left the Toson Bumba Mountains shortly after he was collared and has moved all over the mountains since. For a while he hung out in Aztai’s area, and this seems to have offended Aztai who followed Saikhan around.

Suhder (Shadow) was collared in May 2009 in the same area as Shonkhor and Saikhan. She is our first female and weighed 30 kg. It is possible that she is a sister to Shonkhor and Saikhan. Unfortunately we could not fit the collar to her smaller neck and she was able to slip out of it within two days.

Itgel (Hope) was caught and wounded in a leghold trap set for wolves by some local herders. A herder came to camp to tell us about what had happened. Itgel had managed to get the trap lose from its anchor and was hiding in a cave with the trap attached to his paw. After several attempts we managed to sedate him by crawling into the cave. Itgel was in bad shape. We treated his wounds, gave him antibiotics and put a collar on him to see if he would survive. There was nothing more we could do for him given our remote location. He seemed to recover from his injuries, and after 1.5 months he was moving around almost like the other leopards. In November 2009 his collar came off and was found on a mountainside. His fate is unknown at the moment.

M7 was collared in February 2010. He weighs 39.5 kg and has no scars on his face. All the adult males have lots of scars from fighting, and the lack of scars makes us believe that he is a younger male, probably 2.5 years old, who has not yet found an area of his own.

Snow Leopards We Have Only Photographed

In November 2008, our trap cameras took pictures of a snow leopard with an S-shaped spot on the back. The cat was named Superman. In June 2009, our trap cameras took more pictures of Superman, this time accompanied by “his” one-year old cubs. Her name was rapidly changed to Supermom! Her three cubs are called Knatte, Fnatte and Tjatte (the Swedish names for Donald Duck’s three nephews).

In March 2009, our trap cameras took pictures of a cat that we named Kitty, hoping that it was a female. Upon closer inspection, it’s appears that Kitty is actually a male.

Another female with three cubs was photographed in summer 2009. At the moment her name is “Toson Bumba Mom”.

Apart from these, we have photographed at least four more cats that have not been named yet.