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Profs and Pints DC presents: “Encountering the Snow Leopard,” on a researcher’s quest to understand what prowls within Central and South Asia’s clouds, with Charlotte Hacker, who has studied carnivores for more than a decade as a wildlife biologist and research associate with the Snow Leopard Conservancy.
The snow leopard of the Himalayas and other Asian mountains is so elusive that it never had been photographed in the wild before the 1970s. It dwells in some of the most remote habitats in the world, with jagged terrain, low levels of oxygen, and inhospitable weather conditions. Those studying it still seek to answer basic questions such as what it eats, how long it lives, and how many exist.
Join snow leopard researcher Charlotte Hacker for a fascinating discussion of her efforts to get to know these big cats and other predators that live alongside it at high altitudes.
This talk, steeped in natural history, will help you gain a rich understanding of snow leopards and species such as the Tibetan wolf, the Eurasian lynx, and the perpetually grumpy-faced Pallas’s cat. You’ll learn about the unique adaptations that allow carnivores to thrive in hostile conditions, about the roles they play in their high-altitude ecosystems, and how they compete with each other.
Dr. Hacker will discuss the various research approaches being used to study such creatures, from traditional tracking methods to cutting-edge genetic sequencing, and she’ll talk about how they’re yielding surprising results. You’ll learn how the study of snow leopards is yielding insights on other wildlife that shares the same landscapes.
Dr. Hacker will bust some commonly held myths about big cats and consider what the future may hold for the inhabitants of one of the most quickly changing regions of a rapidly changing planet. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: Photo by Rolf Dietrich Brecher / Wikimedia Commons .
