Snow leopards have several special features that help them survive at high altitude. Their wide, furry paws work like snowshoes, spreading their weight across soft snow. Their enormously long, thick tail — almost as long as their whole body — helps them balance on narrow ledges and also wraps around them like a scarf when they curl up to sleep in the cold.
These cats are superb athletes. They can leap up to 14 metres in a single bound — about the length of a school bus — when chasing prey across rocky slopes. Their chest is deep and wide to fit extra-large lungs, because the air high in the mountains contains much less oxygen than the air at sea level.
Snow leopards are solitary animals: they live alone and travel huge distances through the mountains. A single snow leopard may roam over an area of several hundred square kilometres, leaving scrawls on rocks with their claws and spray marks to tell other leopards 'this territory is taken'. Camera traps — cameras triggered automatically by movement — are how scientists study them today.