Nutrition
The snow leopards are obligate carnivores. They rely completely on animals for their nutritions and energy. What snow leopards prey upon varies depending on the locations and food availability. They mostly eat blue sheep(Figure 1), ibex(Figure 2) and argali(Figure 3) of Tibet and the Himalayas as well as some smaller mammals like marmots(Team and Oldham, 2018).
Figure 1. Bluesheep. Thomas. (n.d.). Snow Leopard's favorite prey – The Blue Sheep. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from http://walkthewilderness.net/snow-leopards-favorite-prey-the-blue-sheep/
Figure 2. Siberian Ibex or a type of Wild Goat. (2020, January 28). Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://www.loveforwild.com/2020/01/siberian-ibex-or-type-of-wild-goat.html
Figure 3. ArgaliSpecies Info. (2012, August 14). Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://argalinetwork.wordpress.com/species-info/
Snow leopards are opportunistic carnivorous predators and will consume meat that are available to them. The size of the preys can vary from 20kg-250kg based on the availability, but the snow leopards mainly prey upon animals that are 75% of their own size(Lyngdoh et al, 2014)(Figure 4).The snow leopards from different areas also display different prey preferences. Oli & co. (1993) discovered from data collected from 213 scats in Nepal that seven species of wild animal and five species of domestic animals were taken. Blue sheep, Pseudois nayaur, were by far the most common prey for the mountain felines in this altitude. Himalayan marmots, marmota himalayana, were also vital in their diet but saw a lowered amount during the winter because of hibernation. During the winters where other prey saw a dip in killings by the snow leopards, they instead feasted more on Royle’s pika, odio tona royki, and domestic livestock. Out of all domestic livestocks, yaks were the animals that were preyed upon the most frequently during winter times.
In the Tost Mountains of South Gobi, Mongolia, snow leopard’s feces were studied by Shehzad & co. (2012) in an attempt to dissect their diet patterns. Of the 81 fecal items observed, 5 prey were found. Siberian ibex were in 70.8% of all the feces, domestic goats were at 8.6%(Figure 5).This shows the adverse effects of snow leopard’s preying on live stocks during winter times. A study in 2011, Food Habits of snow leopard panthera uncia in Baltistan, Northern Pakistan, found that the snow leopards in that region feasted even more so on domestic livestock. 70% of their diet was all from domestic animals with sheep at 23%, goat at 16%, yak at 7%, and yak hybrids at 14%. Only 30% of the animals hunted by the snow leopards in that area were wild animals (Anwar,2011).
Figure 4. Prey weight and relative occurrence of prey in snow leopard scat.. Lyngdoh S, Shrotriya S, Goyal SP, Clements H, Hayward MW, et al. (2014) Prey Preferences of the Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia): Regional Diet Specificity Holds Global Significance for Conservation. PLOS ONE 9(2): e88349. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088349
Figure 5. Relative frequencies of various prey species present in the diet, on the basis of their occurrence in feces of snow leopards from the Tost Mountains, South Gobi, Mongolia.Shehzad W, McCarthy TM, Pompanon F, Purevjav L, Coissac E, Riaz T, et al. (2012) Prey Preference of Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) in South Gobi, Mongolia. PLoS ONE 7(2): e32104. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032104
As an exclusive carnivore, the presence of plants doesn’t seem to matter in a snow leopards diet. However, plants have been detected in the fecal matter of a lot of big cat species in the past including the snow leopards. The domestic cats we have at home are also carnivores, but the pet owners need to routinely feed them cat grass or lax to help them get rid of the hairballs. Do the snow leopards who live in the wild also face problems? Are plants necessary or beneficial for the hairball excretions in the snow leopards? A recent study investigating the relationship between eating plants and excreting hairballs in snow leopards gave one possible answer to the questions. The experiment recorded the frequency of vomiting, frequency of plant-eating and the plant matter in the scant. However, the results of the experiments show that the plants have little effect on relieving hairballs(Figure 6), and they mainly rely on vomiting and excreting through fecal(Yoshimura,2020). Thus, the function of plants in the snow leopards diet is still unknown now.
Figure 6. The mean total hair and plant amounts (g, dried weight) contained in scat samplesYoshimura H, Qi H, Kikuchi DM, Matsui Y, Fukushima K, et al. (2020) The relationship between plant-eating and hair evacuation in snow leopards (Panthera uncia). PLOS ONE 15(7): e0236635. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236635