IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Guggisberg, C.A.W. | |
| Snow Leopard, Ounce _Uncia uncia _(Schreiber 1775) | |
| 1975 Book Chapter | |
Characteristics, distribution and habits of the snow leopard The snow leopard was first brought to the notice of the European public in 1761, when Buffon produced a recognizable figure of this beautiful cat, but slipped up in stating that it occurred in Persia and was trained for hunting, presumably getting it mixed up with the cheetah. The French naturalist called it "once", a name derived from the "lyncaea" that had long been applied to lynxes and various other felines. In French and English, "once" and "ounce" are still used for the snow leopard, while the Spanish "onza", the Portuguese "onca" and the German "Unze" all refer to the jaguar. Schreber Latinized Buffon's "once" when giving the species its scientific name of Felis uncia. He assumed it to occur in "Barbary, Persia, East India and China," and we can hardly blame him for this, considering that the few skins so far seen by Europeans had probably gone from hand to hand in the fur trade, ending up far from their places of origin in the palaces of Oriental potentates or Chinese mandarins. It was only when naturalists such as Peter Simon Pallas and Samuel Gmelin set out to explore the more remote parts of Russia's Asiatic empire that information regarding the snow leopard's true home began to come in. Like the clouded leopard, the snow leopard takes up an intermediate position between the small cats and the members of the genus Panthera, but it is thought by most taxonomists to stand much closer to the latter, so close, in fact, that J. Ellerman and T.C.S. Morrison-Scott, in their Checklist of Palaearctic and Indian Mammals, refer to Uncia as a subgenus of Panthera. It seems preferable, however, to follow Hemmer and Petzsch in giving it separate generic status. It certainly has many of the attributes of the big cats. The hyoid, for instance, is only partially ossified, but the ounce is nevertheless able to purr. It does not roar, like the members of the genus Panthera, and has some behavioral peculiarities, such as its way of feeding, which are reminiscent of the small cats. The cubs display a striking resemblance to those of the Puma. The pupils are round in contraction. The ounce's skull is relatively large, very much shortened and broadened in the region of the brain-case. It differs considerably from that of the leopard, being much higher and more convex when viewed from the side, with a depression at the hind end of the nasal bones which are short and broad. The anterior upper premolar is present. |
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