Taming the Snow Leopard: A Central Asian Mystery

The snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is the defining icon of Central Asia. Following the local extinction of the Asiatic lion and the Caspian tiger—subjects I have explored in previous columns—and given the precarious state of the Persian leopard outside a few isolated pockets in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, it is now the undisputed king of the neighborhood.

Living in splendid isolation across Asia’s great massifs—the Altai, Pamir, Tian Shan, Hindu Kush, and Himalayas—the snow leopard rarely descends below 3,000 meters. It is a specialist, hunting mountain sheep like the Argali and other large mammals, though it isn't above snacking on marmots and pikas, or even supplementing its carnivorous diet with the occasional bit of greenery.

Current estimates place the global population at roughly 5,000, with the largest numbers concentrated in Chinese Tibet and Mongolia. Conservation efforts in Tajikistan and Afghanistan are slowly bearing fruit, helping numbers recover after decades of relentless poaching for the fur trade and the traditional Chinese medicine market.

The snow leopard came to mind this week when a friend sent me a photograph of a Mongolian herder, AK-47 in hand, with a seemingly tamed leopard sitting calmly at his side. The image, disappointingly, appears to be a clever Photoshop job, but the reason it caught my eye was actually etched in stone long ago.

Cholpon-Ata in northern Kyrgyzstan is home to some of the most striking petroglyphs I have ever encountered. When I first visited over a decade ago, I was stunned to find ancient hunting scenes featuring what looked remarkably like tamed snow leopards.

The nomadic economy of Central Asia is, of course, built entirely on domestication; without their animals, humans could never have survived the Great Steppe. But while horses, camels, and sheep are the obvious partners for such a life, the snow leopard—a solitary ghost of the high peaks—is hardly a natural candidate for human companionship.

Despite these hurdles, we should remember that the leopard’s range was once far broader. Fatal encounters between leopards and shepherds in the high passes of Tibet and Mongolia are well-documented, and it is easy to imagine young cubs being captured in the aftermath. Furthermore, the fact that the snow leopard is less social than a dog or even a lion doesn't rule out the possibility of it being tamed—a process quite distinct from full domestication. We know, after all, that Indian and Iranian nobility once used tamed cheetahs as hunting companions.

One author even asserts that "snow leopards were used by the Mongols in their great hunts—massive, ceremonial military maneuvers—and were sometimes carried to the killing fields on horseback."

Granted, that quote may be apocryphal, the photo is almost certainly a fake, and I haven't quite settled the question of whether prehistoric Central Asians truly hunted with leopards.

But I have, at the very least, spent some time contemplating the snow leopard. And perhaps that is enough.

In the photos: The viral image of the Mongolian herder and his "tame" leopard; the petroglyphs at Cholpon-Ata depicting Siberian ibex and what appear to be trained leopards.

Captured in Kyrgyzstan (2007): A snow leopard cub; the coat of arms of Almaty, featuring a leopard clutching a flowering apple branch (Alma-Ata, after all, means "Father of Apples"); and a few more cubs, because one can never really have enough.