Beautify gray leopards exist in the mountains of Central Asia. They are covered with thick hair and their feet are full with fur which serves as natural snowshoes. Snow leopards have strong legs and able to jump as far as 50 feet (15 meters). They use their long tails for overall body balancing and as blanket to cover sensitive body parts when the weather is cold.
Snow leopards kill upon blue sheep (bharal) of Tibet and Himalaya, and also the mountain ibex which appear in their range. Snow leopards are a powerful predator which not only kill animals three times heavier but also eat smaller animal like marmots, hares and game birds.
For a single year, one Indian snow leopard which kept and monitored in a national park, able to consume five blue sheep, nine Tibetan wooly hares, twenty five marmots, five domestic goats, one domestic sheep and fifteen birds. Due to the occasionally taste on the domestic animals, it may be the reason which lead to many dead of big cats at the hands of herders.
There is a dramatic reduce on the snow leopard population due to such killings, and also the use of their body parts to be formulated for traditional Chinese medicine. Damage of their habitat and the low number of their large mammal prey are also the factors.