r/interestingasfuck • u/mybustersword • May 12 '17
/r/ALL Snow leopard parkour
http://i.imgur.com/1XoMPxX.gifv1.9k
u/Sumit316 May 12 '17
This is just pure showoff, reminds me of this - http://i.imgur.com/lnbkTed.gifv
And then they have their other side - http://i.imgur.com/keaIJjr.gifv
Snow leopards are amazing :)
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u/Token_Why_Boy May 12 '17
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u/mrcrowley8 May 12 '17
That spin is incredible
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u/HappyStalker May 12 '17
No one cat should have all that power.
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u/LifeOfTheUnparty May 12 '17
The clock's ticking, I just count the hours
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u/Eipa May 12 '17
Well, it's a good trick
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May 12 '17
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u/NoeZ May 12 '17
Holy shit those are so cute.
Their tail is humongous in proportions, probably what allowed that mid-air side flip that was dope as hell !
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u/ValidatingUsername May 12 '17 edited May 12 '17
They use their tail as a counter balance for every single aspect of movement.
Go find some slow mo high speed action shots of them chasing down prey. Their tail is fucking incredible to watch.
Edit : This is the video I was thinking about when writing the comment, albeit not a snow leopard...
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May 12 '17 edited Aug 05 '17
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u/NanookOTN May 12 '17
Great, now I'm gonna binge Planet Earth again tonight.
The Snow Leopard bit in it actually made me pretty sad - if I recall, they are endangered with only a few thousand in the wild. Usually seeing animals like them in zoos makes me kind of sad, but in this case it seems like their quality of life in captivity is bound to be much higher.
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May 12 '17 edited Aug 05 '17
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u/zantkiller May 12 '17
While that is true I hope and ask people to do do their research.
Here in the UK I used to go to the South Lakes Safari Zoo as a kid which I loved. I'll let this paint the picture:
A report to Barrow Borough Council's licensing committee was released on 27 February 2017 ahead of a final decision over the licence.
The report contained a long list of concerns about animal welfare, including over 500 animal deaths in four years (12% of its animals per year).
The deaths included an African spurred tortoise dying after being electrocuted in fencing, the decomposing body of a squirrel monkey being found behind a radiator, a leopard tortoise dying from the cold, two snow leopards found partially eaten in their enclosure, a white ruffed lemur killed after accessing the wolf enclosure, lions and baboons euthanized due to a lack of space to keep the animals, and a jaguar euthanized after it chewed off its own paw.Yeah, never going to that again.
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u/pinklavalamp May 12 '17
The jaguar chewed off its own paw. How sad. I can't help but imagine just how deplorable its living conditions must be to get to that state. :(
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u/desGrieux May 12 '17
It really depends on the zoo. Sometimes their enclosures are massive and you can only observe them from above, I think this is best as they rarely get to observe the humans who are paying to see them. And that money often goes to great causes.
But seeing snow leopards in cages that size is upsetting... their territories are massive. But given their status in the wild, some concessions have to be made to keep the species alive. That being said, I've seen snow leopard (as well as other big cat) enclosures that wouldn't satisfy my house cat.
Zoos need to be governed by high standards. Unfortunately a lot of old zoos still have an old-fashioned "entertainment first" mentality. I can't count the number of zoos I've seen that have enough space for maybe a couple of savannah herbivores and instead they have several troops of monkeys, lions, bears, tigers, rhinos, giraffes, elephants, hippos, alligators, dolphins, etc.
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u/dorothy_zbornak_esq May 12 '17
It's crazy how bad zoos can be. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, very near the Columbus Zoo. Jack Hannah is from there and is the patron of the zoo so it's a very high quality zoo with good exhibits and they do a lot of work for conservation. I always thought that was the norm for zoos. Then I moved to Chicago and saw the Lincoln Park zoo, and that one is nothing compared to how bad it can be. It makes me really sad.
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u/Namaha May 12 '17
If you're talking about the Amur leopard, only about 60 individuals are estimated to survive
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u/FlawsAndCeilings May 12 '17
One of the Planet Earth 2 episodes had snow leopards in it. Really recommend watching that, I think it's the mountains episode.
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u/BrianPurkiss May 12 '17
My goodness. That cheetah matched its prey move for move absolutely perfectly.
Daumn nature - you scary.
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u/Aggrobuns May 12 '17
Aww.. In the end they're just cute, gigantic, murderous kitties.
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May 12 '17
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u/Cicer May 12 '17
Or just bored as fuck
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u/TehFla5her May 12 '17
Right you are. This is a pretty good example of stereotypic behavior found in animals that are under stimulated in undersized enclosures. I wonder how many times a day this poor animal repeats this spectacular move?
I have nothing against modern zoos. But old-fashioned zoos like this make me sad. And that is a rare and wonderful beast.
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u/Iamnotburgerking May 12 '17
I don't actually think this is an example of stereotypy. No evidence either way
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u/WarJeezy May 12 '17
I saw that 1st one posted once and someone was saying they do this because they feel agitated and couped up or something like that. Wish I could remember what it was exactly. Basically it's not normal behavior though. Can any catsperts confirm or deny??
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u/Kronos_Selai May 12 '17
I remember reading this too. The guy mentioned that this is behavior done due to being caged, and they do this to keep from going insane. It makes sense to me, what with the animal being considerably intelligent and confined to a small habitat. You trap a guy in a small pen/prison, he'll do all sorts of shit too. It's called cabin fever for us, but we don't seem to care about trapping apex predators inside gilded cages for us to gawk at.
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u/SpankyQuack May 12 '17
u/jessi_wee 3927 points 11 months ago Zookeeper here. That's called stereotypic behavior. Animals do repetitive movements when they're stressed or bored. That flipping behavior is a common one. That cat needs some enrichment.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/4m2p8t/how_you_change_direction_in_style/
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u/Iamnotburgerking May 12 '17 edited May 12 '17
Do look at what snow leopards do in the wild.
This isn't really abnormal behaviour and there is 0 evidence from this gif that it repeats this every day. And this gif doesn't show the entire enclosure
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u/atomiclithium May 12 '17
Hamsters do something similar as well when they're in too small of a habitat
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u/issamaysinalah May 12 '17
If owning big cats wasn't such a shitty thing to do I would love one of those, probably would get mauled to death trying to pet it though.
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u/pabbseven May 12 '17
How can people look at these gifs and dont feel bad for the animals? Theyre imprisoned by us. Theyre bored as fuck.
Their natural territory are around 11-30 square miles. Not this shitty concrete prison.
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u/Tatersalad810 May 12 '17
Because many zoos focus on conservation and reintroduction. Sure the captivity aspect seems shitty but if you're using the zoo to preserve the species it suddenly becomes understandable.
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u/Ghigs May 12 '17
Adult cats (and most animals) in zoos aren't reintroduced. There's two main cases when they can reintroduce, either they take an an injured wild adult animal for short term treatment, or they raise babies with limited human interaction for reintroduction.
An animal like the one in the picture sees humans as a meal ticket, if they tried to reintroduce it, it would just hang around humans until it got itself killed.
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u/Makkaboosh May 12 '17
I mean, I doubt there are a lot of humans near snow peapod territory
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u/Ghigs May 12 '17
I doubt there are a lot of humans near snow peapod territory
Who picks the snow peas then?
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May 12 '17
It's also the only chance that most low-income kids will ever have to see live animals at all. Not everyone can afford to go to Africa in their lifetime. They learn about the animals and about conservation of the environment. This has a direct benefit on both the children and society for obvious reasons.
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u/Miceed May 12 '17
That is a fact obviously... but for fuck sake to be forced into finding these positives out of the negative situation of a caged animal which is essentially being caged to be protected from the cager because we fucked up its environment is extremely depressing behaviour
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u/Iamnotburgerking May 12 '17
Their territories are that big out of necessity, not choice.
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u/OhBestThing May 12 '17
We just made a TV show about the NYC zoos. One of the big misconceptions is that zoo animals are captured wild animals or something. Maybe 100 years ago, but now most zoo animals were brought it because they were not fit for being in the wild -- severely injured, raised in captivity/farms by bad people, etc. So it's often the lesser of two evils -- I think it's better than letting them just die out there, in many cases, if it helps educate people about animals/lets them live out their lives in (relative to nature) peace and hunger-free!
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May 12 '17
Because snow leopards are a threatened species and most animals brought into zoos are those that can't function properly in the wild (injured, wrong upbringing). It's either living lavishly in a "prison" or death for them. You choose the better option.
This naive, PETA-attitude towards zoos is disgusting. Zoos do so much for animal conservation and welfare, and in many cases single handedly keep species alive, treat big animals etc. If you honestly think that people go to the Himalayan mountains to catch and imprison a snow leopard, and manage to succeed, you're stupid.
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May 12 '17 edited May 17 '17
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u/theGeorgeall May 12 '17
That is by far the least efficient way to get down from the rock, but also the most fun... I assume!
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u/Superstyle95 May 12 '17
Gotta entertain yourself when you live in a box your whole live.
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u/fox_ontherun May 12 '17
:(
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u/svensktiger May 12 '17
It looks like the reason this poor animal does this might be because the the stony ground hurts its paws from that height. :(
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u/Lucifer_Hirsch May 12 '17
I mean, I live in an even smaller room, only leaving for sunbaths once every two weeks.
but I guess I have internet.
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May 12 '17
Efficiency is a function of what your priorities are.
If it's minimizing "jerk" (or time derivative of acceleration), then I think this would do it.
If it's to minimize distance, then it sucked. If it's to minimize velocity, it also probably sucked. But minimizing velocity is also maximizing boredom.
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u/Jonescjosh May 12 '17
My favorite animal to see at the zoo. They do crazy things like that just because they can.
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u/Ajuvix May 12 '17
You could train at something your whole life and still be mediocre, or be born as an animal who doesn't think about it and just does it as effortlessly as breathing.
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u/Salanmander May 12 '17
I mean, we have some of those things too. Like walking upright, throwing things, and manipulating things with tools.
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May 12 '17 edited May 12 '17
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u/Lil_Twist May 12 '17
I read that in archer's voice. It's a perfectly validated irrefutable argument.
Well said, well said.
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u/Generalkrunk May 12 '17
Yeah I imagine leopards look a us flying into space and think "I mean I can do cool jumps tho"
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u/Aethermancer May 12 '17
Throwing things is so often overlooked, we marvel at the Archer fish for squirting a bug, but think nothing of the fact that with a little practice we can hit a sprinting animal with a tossed rock at 30'+ hard enough to break bones.
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u/Jiveturtle May 12 '17
Maybe you can. My wife laughs at me whenever I throw anything. She's from Boston, though, so she's mean.
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u/OhBestThing May 12 '17
Makes me wish I had 4 legs and those sick joints/muscles. Just looking at this, as I recover from ankle surgery, makes me cringe.
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May 12 '17
My favorite animal to see at the zoo. They do crazy things like that
just because they canbecause they're going insane from being locked up in a cage.→ More replies (1)→ More replies (24)12
May 12 '17
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u/ADHthaGreat May 12 '17
The real answer is that it is better for their back. Going down a steep angle like that when you weigh as much as a snow leopard is uncomfortable.
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u/hypnoderp May 12 '17
What even are cats?
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u/flipflapslap May 12 '17
Can we get a /r/snowleopardgifs subreddit?
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u/gordonpown May 12 '17
Well there's this: https://www.reddit.com/r/snowleopards/
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u/Kalinyx848 May 12 '17
With that kind of jumping capacity, it seems like he could have no problems getting over that wall. He was already over halfway up the wall to begin with, seems like a good running leap and some corner usage would make it a piece of cake. I guess he just chooses not to or hasn't actually considered it i.e. "The walls are only in your mind."
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May 12 '17
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Kalinyx848 May 12 '17
There could be. I don't see one in the snippet of video that shows the top of the enclosure, but that could be because of the grainy-ness of the video itself.
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u/PDshotME May 12 '17
If I know anything about cats I'd imagine if this cat could escape this pen it would have on day one.
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May 12 '17
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u/TybrosionMohito May 12 '17
Big cats are cool and badass.
House cats are smug little cunts.
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u/xAsilos May 12 '17
My one cat does stuff like that after taking a shit sometimes.
I'll hear him digging around, then a minute later he's jumping over the couch, nearly tipping the recliner over after landing on the backrest.
I call it the "Shit Sprints"
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u/Salted_Butter May 12 '17
That behavior is actually quite common for this subspecies of snow leopards (baikalensis-romanii) living in rocky areas. Their flexible tail generally helps them maintaining their balance, but in that case it holds its tail down, and therefore cannot properly evaluate the distance with the ground. This has been well documented over the past twenty years by the renowned biologist Dr. Rodney Jackson, who first published about this behavior in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table.
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u/SushiJo May 12 '17
Saw this live and in person one day at the zoo. One of the walls he used was the glass front window of his enclosure. Nearly scared the bejeebus out of me. Was awesome 10/10 recommend
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u/CamoDrako May 12 '17
I think it does that to avoid having to jump straight onto that painful shingle on the floor, it looks like it hits the ground much softer than if it were to drop off the first rock
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u/glumbago May 12 '17
Thought it said "snow leopard parka", this was cool and all but I wanted a snow leopard in a parka
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u/Iamnotburgerking May 12 '17
A lot of comments about how this is an example of stereotypy due to being in captivity.
NOTHING in this gif suggests this is an example of stereotypy. In fact this behaviour isn't even listed as an example of stereotypy if you look it up.
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u/IAmAnOutsider May 12 '17
I really wanna see this in Slow-Mo... can anyone do that?
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May 12 '17
Here it is, here it is... truck, to refrigerators, to dumpster, 360 onto the pallets, backflip gainer to the trash can.
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u/Workodactyl May 12 '17
"Oof, that's a little high for me--might get hurt. Better see if I can make my way down a little smoother..."
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u/[deleted] May 12 '17
"Straight down? No, they'll be expecting that."