Animals Now

The Snow Leopard or ounce is a big cat native to the mountainous ranges of Central and South Asia. It is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The Snow Leopard inhabits alpine and subalpine zones at elevation 3,000m to 4500m ranging from eastern Afghanistan to Mongolia and Western China. In the northern range countries, it also occurs at lower elevations. The snow leopard's fur is whitish to gray with black spots on head and neck, but larger rosettes on the back, flanks and bushy tail. The belly is whitish. The fur is thick with hairs between 5 and 12 cm. It has a large and heavy tail to help it balance in the steep terrain of the Himalayas. Global Warming has caused the tree line to be increased in altitude, resulting in the decrease of wild prey that depend on the plants for food. The snow leopard is solitary, except for females with cubs. They rear them in dens in the mountains for extended periods. The snow leopard is a carnivore and hunts it's own prey. It can kill animals two to four times its own weight, such as the Himalayan Blue Sheep, Himalayan Tahr, markhor, Argali and juvenile horses and camels. Snow leopards prefer to ambush their prey from above, using broken terrain to conceal their approach. The snow leopard is capable of killing most animals in it's range with the probable exception of the adult male yak. 

Zebras are several species of African equids (horse family) united by their distinctive black and white striped coats. Their stripes come in different patterns, unique to each individual. They are generally social animals that live in small harems to large herds. Unlike their closest relatives, horses and donkeys, zebras have never been truly domesticated. They occur in a variety of habitats, such as grasslands, savannas, woodlands, thorny scrublands, mountains and coastal hills. The plains Zebra is the most common, and has or had about six subspecies distributed across much of Southern and Eastern Africa. It was previously believed that zebras were white animals with black stripes, since some zebras have white underbellies. Embryological evidence, however, shows that the animal's background color is black and the white stripes and bellies are additions. Zebras communicate with each other with high-pitched barks and whinnying. Grévy's zebras make mulelike brays. A zebra's ears signify its mood. When a zebra is in a calm, tense or friendly mood, its ears stand erect. When it is frightened, its ears are pushed forward. When angry, the ears are pulled backward. When surveying an area for predators, zebras will stand in an alert posture with ears erect, head held high, and staring. When tense, they will also snort. When a predator is spotted or sensed, a zebra will bark (or bray) loudly.  

The black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) is a species of large crocodilian and, along with the American alligator, is one of the biggest extant members of the family Alligatoridae and order Crocodilia. It is a carnivorous reptile that lives along slow-moving rivers, lakes, seasonally flooded savannas of the Amazon basin, and in other freshwater habitats of South America. It is a quite large species, growing to at least 5 m (16 ft) and possibly up to 6 m (20 ft) in length, which makes it the second largest reptile in the Neotropical ecozone, next to the critically endangered Orinoco crocodile. The black caiman is the largest predator in the Amazon ecosystem, preying on a variety of fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals. It is a generalist and apex predator, potentially capable of taking any animal within its range, including other predators. At the end of the dry season, females build a nest of soil and vegetation, which is about 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) across and 0.75 meters (2.5 feet) wide. They lay up to 65 eggs (though usually somewhere between 30 and 60), which hatch in about six weeks, at the beginning of the wet season, when newly flooded marshes provide ideal habitat for the juveniles once hatched. Humans hunt black caimans for leather or meat. This species was classified as Endangered in the 1970s due to the high demand for its well-marked skin. The trade in black caiman leather peaked from the 1950s to 1970s, when the smaller but much more common spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus) became the more commonly hunted species. Local people still trade black caiman skins and meat today at a small scale but the species has rebounded overall from the overhunting in the past.