What do snow leopards eat? Mainly blue sheep.

What Do Snow Leopards Eat? Here is a list with descriptions and some photographs. The snow leopard, like any cat is a carnivore and as expected hunts local prey. A major snow leopard prey item (species) and one that immediately comes to mind is the bharral or blue sheep¹–Pseudois nayaur².

To get a feel for sizes, one of the biggest snow leopards that the Snow Leopard Trust has studied weighed 42 kg (92 lbs)³. A large young male was weighed at 39.5 kg (87 lbs). The blue sheep is a goat-antelope or caprid⁴. It is found in the high Himalayas of Nepal, China, Kashmir, Pakistan, Bhutan, Tibet and India. Adult male blue sheep weigh in the order of 33.3 kg (73 lbs)⁵.

Both the blue sheep and the snow leopard are animals completely adapted to high altitude. In the Tibetan highlands blue sheep live at an altitude of 6,100 m⁶. In the Manang District of the Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal, research indicates that the blue sheep is the most important prey of the snow leopard. Five to seven adult snow leopards used the 105 km² study area (4.8 – 6.7 per 100km²). Blue sheep density was assessed at 6.6 – 10.2 per 100km². In this research Marmots contributed significantly to the snow leopard’s diet⁷. What do snow leopards eat? Answer: mainly blue sheep. It would seem to be agreed that the principal prey of the snow leopard is blue sheep⁸. In the Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal, the frequency of occurrence of blue sheep in snow leopard diets was 51.6 percent as at 2002. In the Langu Valley, Magu District, Nepal it was 44.9 percent (reference: Wild Cats of the World by the Sunquists).

Perhaps equal or a close second would be ibex (Capra sibirica). The distribution of both these animals coincides accurately with snow leopard range. A snow leopard will kill between 20 – 30 adult blue sheep per year, killing one every 10 -15 days and eating the kill for up to 7 days⁹.

Snow leopards also prey on marmot (genus Marmota) as mentioned above. The Himalayan marmot is found at elevations from 300 metres to 4,500 metres of the Himalayas. It is a type of ground squirrel the size of a domestic cat¹⁰.

Another prey species is the pika (Genus Ochotona), which is a small chinchilla-like animal. It has short limbs, rounded ears and a short tail¹¹. Other prey includes hares (Lepus spp.), small rodents, and game birds. Historically the snow leopard preys a lot on domestic livestock (sheep, yak and goats for example), which results in retaliatory killing of the snow leopard by the farmers. This is where the Snow Leopard Trust is doing such fantastic and clever work.

They are working from the ground up (with the local people as opposed to with governments) to gain the local communities’ cooperation to create grazing free reserves where the natural habitat of the snow leopard and their prey can recover. The Trust has also set up an insurance scheme in respect of prey lost to predators¹² and a very clever scheme in which livestock is protected from illness thereby taking away the pressure of dealing with the snow leopard (i.e. eliminating it) – see Clever Cat Conservation.

Finally snow leopards also eat carrion and:

• urial & argali sheep
• wild ass
• musk deer
• wild pigs
• gazelles
• markhor
• rabbits
• pheasant
• partridge
• snowcock
• vegetation. This is a wild cat that probably eats more vegetation than any other and I speculate as to why on this page: Cat that eats vegetation.
  

What Do Snow Leopards Eat? — Photo credits:

• Blue sheep – by reurinkjan
• ibex – by Jeff Pang
• Himalayan marmot – by stevehicks
• Pika – by chrisgrier

All photos published under Attribution 2.0 Generic creative commons license.

What Do Snow Leopards Eat? to Wild Cat Species