Original subtitles

I've spent much of my working life

trying to film big cats.

I've watched them in the wild and analyzed the footage

in the editing room, which has given me

a real insight into their behavior.

Today we can see these amazing predators

on our screens anytime we choose.

(dramatic music)

But until quite recently,

we knew practically nothing about them.

(exciting music)

Big cats are normally shy and very secretive.

Today their populations are shrinking fast.

But now we have the means to view them

in more detail than ever.

(exciting music)

And learn the intricacies of their lives.

(exciting music)

Which is just as well,

because we need to find ways of living along side them

before they disappear forever.

(wind blowing)

There is a cat so rare and which lives

in places so remote and wild that the rest

of the world barely knew it existed until recently.

It is the snow leopard.

(slow suspenseful music)

Often referred to as the gray ghost,

or ghost of the mountains,

this animal's rarity and elusiveness was legendary.

In the past, it was known as the ounce,

but today we've settled on the name snow leopard.

However, it's quite different to the leopard

and in fact, is more closely related to the tiger.

(slow suspenseful music)

The snow leopard wears a luxuriant coat which is so thick,

it conceals a surprisingly long-legged and lithe animal.

It has a strangely heavy brow, unlike any other cat,

along with a gigantic tail weighted with fat.

(wind blowing)

But like all the other big cats,

it feeds on animals that are,

more often than not, larger than itself.

(snow leopard eating)

While the snow leopard has long been known to science,

images of wild snow leopards

have only recently become possible.

This is partly because of new technology,

but mostly because increasingly,

snow leopards allow us to see them.

(wind howling)

The places where snow leopards live

are almost always remote, barely inhabited by people,

cold, down to minus 40 in the winter.

Yet, extreme altitude, extreme cold,

and extremely rugged landscapes don't seem

to bother this cat at all.

It's really hard to imagine how anything lives here.

(wind howling)

But as I discovered while making this film,

it does so with some of the most extraordinary behavior

I've ever seen.

The snow leopard may be the world's smallest big cat,

but I can safely say it is the toughest.

(wind howling)

In this sparse environment,

one of the snow leopards biggest challenges

is meeting another of the opposite sex.

(snow leopard vocalizes)

My biggest challenge was just to find such

a perfectly camouflaged animal in this daunting landscape.

(wind howling)

Snow leopards are found across most of

the high mountains and plateau of Central Asia.

They have the narrowest distribution of all the big cats.

We don't even know how many there are,

but it's thought there may be

as few as 3,500 still in existence.

(calming music)

In the maze of peaks and gullies they normally inhabit,

snow leopards are mostly invisible to humans.

These are Tost Mountains

on the edge of Mongolia's Gobi desert.

(calming music)

It's dry and very cold, minus 40 in the winter.

(calming music)

This population of snow leopards

is one of the best studies in the world.

But we've really only just begun

to gather scientific knowledge about snow leopards.

(wind rustling)

Much of their lives is still a mystery.

I started working with snow leopards in 2008,

so it's been nine years now.

Since you can't really see the snow leopards,

they're so very well camouflaged

and in these mountains, you can't follow them.

The only way to collect solid data is

to fit some sort of a tracking device

to a number of individuals.

The GPS collars we use have gathered

a tremendous amount of information

and painted a new picture of what a snow leopard is

compared to what we thought back in 2008.

Orjan's data reveal

that snow leopards travel more widely than anybody thought.

So for us, finding one is going to be difficult.

By watching the local wildlife,

we can get an idea of where a cat might be.

This is lammergeier, or bearded vulture.

The Asian range of this giant scavenger overlaps

that of the snow leopard almost exactly.

It's presence here suggests there could be a big cat nearby.

(slow suspenseful tune)

The cinereous vulture,

the second largest of all vultures, is here too.

As morning sunlight hits the peaks,

warm air begins to rise.

(slow suspenseful tune)

These huge vultures use their three meter wingspans

on thermals to carry them over the mountains,

and their high resolution vision

to notice the tiniest details,

such a snow leopard kills far below.

(slow suspenseful tune)

The golden eagle is another camp follower,

often scavenging more than it hunts.

All these birds depend to a great

or a lesser extent on snow leopards.

The fact that they're here at all and in the air,

is a sign that perhaps there is a cat nearby.

(wind blowing)

Observing the prey of snow leopards can be helpful too.

(dramatic music)

These are wild sheep called argali.

(dramatic music)

They look nervous.

(dramatic music)

These are Siberian ibex.

(dramatic music)

These wild goats are extremely sharp-eyed and suspicious.

The ibex are also very agile and sure-footed.

Any predator that could actually catch one of these

in this landscape would need some extraordinary abilities

and nerves of steel.

The mature males are more than twice

the weight of a snow leopard, and they're strong.

Yet studies show that snow leopards hunt

even the largest males.

(ibex horns smash together)

(rocks tumbling)

When I started this project,

I'd never seen a snow leopard myself.

But we now know for sure that

the Tost Mountains are home to some 15 or so.

Looking out for signs of their presence,

the usual suspects were apparent

and also the remains of a kill, just a leg.

Watching us long before we spotted her,

a female snow leopard, half a kilometer away.

My first ever.

Rather obviously stuffed with ibex.

(soft music)

For us, daylight sightings were rare and mostly fleeting,

and frequently too distant to get good pictures.

We'd found the best time

to see snow leopards was dawn or dusk.

But even these distant glimpses of such

a rare, elusive animal were a delight.

(soft music)

Orjan's studies show that here,

snow leopards do feed mainly on ibex

and that they are active mostly at night.

(wind rustling)

The cats watch the wild goats moving

from their daytime grazing areas

to nighttime sleeping spots.

The sure-footedness of the ibex

on these almost vertical cliffs is impressive.

(rocks rustling)

(goats bleating)

There's one more kind of goats in these mountains,

slower and less nimble than the ibex,

the domesticated cashmere goat.

These animals could be a tempting substitute

for the evasive ibex.

The secretive snow leopard is not above

a bit of goat rustling, but even so,

few people ever see the cats.

Hence their other name, ghost of the mountain.

Because of snow leopards and wolves,

the goats can't be left on the mountain at night.

They spend the hours of darkness

in the relative safety of the ger.

The previous night a snow leopard took a goat,

decapitated it, and took the head away.

The herder thinks it could come back tonight.

(soft music)

No one's ever filmed a snow leopard at night before,

so this is a bit of an experiment.

To help us, we have a thermal camera.

Even at minus 20, it gives a clear view of everything.

(soft tune)

The super sensitive starlight camera reveals

a sky with no trace of distant city lights.

We can use infrared light, which only the camera can see,

it's invisible to the animals.

But we don't need to hear special equipment

to hear dogs barking.

(dogs barking)

Soon there's a glint of eye shine.

It's a fox, another follower of the snow leopard.

One of the dogs checks the herd,

but they all continue to bark

as if something is out there.

Neither of the night cameras reveal

anything apart from the fox.

(dogs barking)

Suddenly, on a distant ridge,

two eyes are watching us.

It's a snow leopard.

(dogs barking in the distance)

Is that what's making the dogs bark?

How could they have possibly have detected

it at half a kilometer away?

(dogs barking in the distance)

(wind blowing)

The snow leopard doesn't appear concerned.

(wind blowing)

Nor do the goats.

(suspenseful music)

It's coming towards us.

(suspenseful music) (dogs barking)

As the snow leopard reappears,

it's looking directly at us.

The light from our camera monitors is a giveaway.

(suspenseful music) (dogs barking)

The cat appears confident that it can't be seen

and studies the situation.

(suspenseful music)

The fact that it is completely aware of us and the dogs,

yet still proceeds, is fascinating.

(dogs barking)

Perhaps it knows the dogs can't see it.

(suspenseful music) (dogs barking)

There it is again, much closer now.

(suspenseful music) (dogs barking)

Is it trying to get to the dead goat?

Almost as if it has a plan,

it moves silently into the gully.

(goats bleat)

Then the barking stops.

Do the dogs think the snow leopard's gone now?

(suspenseful music)

Incredibly, the snow leopard managed

to kill a kid out of view of us or the dogs.

It fed quickly and was long gone before anyone realized.

So the snow leopard turns out to be cunning as well.

They're not called ghost of the mountain for nothing.

It's not a big loss for the herder,

but opinion is divided over what

to do about snow leopards.

Of course, this was revealing,

but it didn't tell me much about

how the snow leopard's hunt ibex.

So the next night we moved 20 miles to where

a snow leopard had been sited recently.

Once the moon sets, the ibex seem to change their behavior.

(suspenseful music)

These appear to be heading for a sheer cliff.

(suspenseful music)

There they sit down and stay quiet.

Sensible behavior on a cliff face when there's no moon.

(suspenseful music)

Amazingly, not far away is snow leopard.

(rocks rustling)

In the still night's air,

the sound of scraping echoes from the canyon walls.

Exactly the kind of sound that ibex attuned to hear.

(rocks scraping)

The snow leopard can't see the ibex, they're too far away.

He won't even know they're there

if they stay still and silent.

He's marking his territory.

In typical cat fashion,

he leaves a message of urine to warn males to stay away

and to invite females to come and find him.

Watching an interaction like that makes me wonder

if that's why snow leopards sometimes target domestic goats.

With no moon, it's just too dark

to chase ibex around on these cliffs.

Perhaps if the moon was up, things would be different.

(wind faintly blowing)

As the snow leopard walks around

among these rocks in the pitch dark,

he appears to be listening more than looking.

His gait is slow and careful.

But he shows little fear of falling.

Perhaps the snow leopard's thick coat

would cushion an impact should they slip.

Maybe their heavy brow could offer protection

to their eyes in the event of a tumble.

(soft tune)

The satellite tags show

that snow leopards walk long distances, often at night,

navigating canyons and gullies with extreme care.

But perhaps the most important thing revealed

by the satellite data is that snow leopards

need far more space than anyone realized.

Orjan's studies in Tost have shown that snow leopards

are far less solitary than we thought.

They scent, mark, and scrape

more frequently than other cats.

They travel widely in search of company.

(soft tune)

They sniff the messages of those before them

and then leave their own calling cards.

We now know from satellite data that these cats

also make long journeys between mountain ranges.

In this way, snow leopards have colonized some of

the most remote and harsh environments on Earth.

But we still know little about them.

However, the advent of tourism to these wild places

gives an unexpected boost to our knowledge.

More eyes and more cameras reveal rare behavior

that has never been filmed before.

(suspenseful music)

(music intensifies)

(bodies thudding)

Incredibly, they are both still alive.

Only by watching it again is it possible

to fully appreciate what actually happened.

(thudding)

(loud thud)

The snow leopard only grabs the rear of the victim.

(bodies thudding)

But rights her body for impact.

Using her heavy tail, she tries to control the situation.

Only now, does she release her grip

so that she can find the neck of the animal

and clasp firmly with claws and teeth.

(bodies thudding)

Here, her brow ridges protect her eyes.

She rolls the dazed animal until she can get her foothold.

(bodies thudding)

Events like this have been reported before,

but never filmed.

The fact that at no point did the cat panic

and let go suggests to me,

this may even have been deliberate.

(soft music)

Three days later, her she is returning

to her frozen kill seemingly uninjured.

(soft music)

The snow leopard may not really be a ghost,

but it does have seemingly supernatural powers

far beyond our comprehension.

(soft music)

Almost everything we find is new

and people are excited about it.

I am exited about it.

It's a rare treat to get

this opportunity for scientists today,

because not even the local people know much and

a lot of the knowledge is really myths.

(inspiring music)