Snow Leopards aren’t Leopards

Snow leopards are part of the Panthera/big cat genus along with tigers, lions, leopards and jaguars. Considering snow leopards and leopards both have rosettes and are able to climb easily, people have often mistaken them as beings very closely related.

Snow leopards are actually more closely related to tigers than to any other member of the genus. Lions are the species most closely related to leopards.

There is evidence that snow leopard ancestors bred with the lion-leopard common ancestor a long time ago. The lion-leopard lineage received more snow leopard genetics than snow leopards received lion-leopard genetics. This would come about by the hybrids preferring to mate with lion-leopards over snow leopards. (A similar thing happened with humans and Neanderthals: hybrids would breed with Homo sapiens rather than Neanderthals.)

 

Some have suggested that this crossbreeding is where snow leopards got their leopard-print from. This isn’t a feasible idea.

Spots and rosettes are present in most feline species, including the Panthera genus. Jaguars also have rosettes for life. Tigons and ligers, tiger-lion hybrids, have lifelong spots despite neither parent species having them for life, indicating that spots were part of the evolutionary history of the genus. (Most lions lose their markings as they mature.)

It’s such a common trait that there are two possibilities. 1: it evolved in a feline ancestor and those present species without spot markings evolved unspotted coats. 2: it’s such a useful trait that it’s convergently evolved many times over. For either possibility, leopard genetics in snow leopards are clearly unnecessary.

Also, remember that lion-leopard received more snow leopard than the other way around. So, if anything, the crossbreeding hypothesis would lead to the conclusion that leopards received their leopard-print from snow leopards!

Another important point is that these snow leopard ancestors and the lion-leopard ancestors might have both been without rosettes or they both had rosettes. To assume one got it from the other is dismissing all the other points of origin for rosettes.

Hence, saying snow leopard’s leopard-print is the result of their interbreeding with lion-leopards is false. So to use the fact that they both have rosettes to justify that snow leopards are leopards is faulty.

 

So, it’s pretty clear that snow leopards aren’t leopards. It’s like claiming jackrabbits are rabbits, even though they’re hares: sure, it’s in the name, and sure, they’re closely related, but neither of those qualifications mean ‘same as’.