The Snow Leopard

The ghost of the mountains. Panthera uncia lives at altitudes above 3,000 meters in the mountains of Central Asia. Its rosettes — large, open rings with smaller spots inside — dissolve into granite at distance. This is not camouflage in the conventional sense. It is disappearance.

Fewer than 7,000 remain in the wild. The snow leopard has never been fully understood by science. What we do know is written on its skin: a pattern that turns rock into animal and animal into rock.