What do snow leopards eat?
Snow leopards are one of the top predators in the high mountain food web of Central Asia. The snow leopard is an opportunistic predator capable of killing prey three times its weight. Snow leopards in the Himalaya and Tibet eat blue sheep (bharal). Snow leopards that live in the Karakorum, Tien Shan, Mongolian and Russian mountain ranges eat ibex (Capra sibirica). Blue sheep and ibex are the snow leopards favorite meal, but they also eat small prey such as marmots, pika, hares and birds. Dr. Rodney Jackson has reported that the annual prey consumption of a snow leopard in India’s Hemis National Park is 5 blue sheep, 9 Tibetan woolly hares, 25 marmots, 5 domestic goats, 1 domestic sheep and 15 birds. Snow leopards help to keep the ecosystem in balance by preying on Himalayan marmot populations. Marmots are important to the alpine pastureland because their burrowing, much like plowing, aerates the soil and helps the grasses grow. The grasses are important to the wild sheep and goats (whi
