Snow leopard - irbis

When I wrote post about Vladikavkaz - city of my childhood, I already told you that the leopards are depicted on the arms of the republic of North Ossetia.

Snow leopard, or a snow cat in the Caucasus - is called an irbis. The very word is borrowed from the Turkic language, which in translation means a snow cat.

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These days, these graceful cats are on the verge of extinction. And that I was very surprised, these cats are the most silent on the planet. No one has ever heard them make any sounds, can not they growl, howl, or even miaow. It turns out really can not. I learned that their larynx has a special structure.

It is also surprising that these big cats do not like to live in one place, they constantly wander.
Today it's here, and tomorrow it's a few tens of kilometers ahead.

If you want to admire the snow leopard, you will have to hunt for it for a long time and persistently, because there are snow leopards in remote mountainous terrain, high in the mountains. Where the human foot does not step, at an altitude of more than 5000 meters. In addition, they are nocturnal and extremely cautious. These "cute" cats have a very long tail, and the body length of the snow leopard reaches almost 250 centimeters.

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Irbis likes to look at the world from high, prefers to observe, and for a long time she looks out for her prey. It is also characteristic that the cats are very jumping. They are able to jump almost 6 meters in length, and jump high, almost 3 meters.

The duration of their lives is more than 20 years, since they live in the mountains, and there is pure mountain air.