3.3 Snow leopard food habits
Out of 73 snow leopard scat samples, micro-histological analysis revealed that one third of scats consisted of multiple prey and two thirds of single prey species. The prey consumed included three wild and four domestic mammals. Wild prey accounted for 49% whereas domestic prey accounted for 45%, with the remainder unidentified, 6% (SD=11.2; N=8; Table 4). Naur dominated wild prey in the snow leopard diet (70%) (SD=3.1 among total available wild prey species, N=3) and yak was the dominant domestic prey item, accounting for approximately 43% of the total domestic livestock in the snow leopard diet, (SD=7.02, N=4).
The harvested biomass by one snow leopard per day was estimated at 3.7 kg/day (Table 5). This is equivalent to 1343 kg annually. This annual biomass estimate, in the KCA, would amount to 21 blue sheep, 2 musk deer, 318 pika, 2 yak, 0.5 cattle, 4 goats, 0.3 sheep and other small mammals including birds (Table 5). Snow leopard preferred Naur to yak, goat and sheep whereas they avoided cow and musk deer on prey biomass availability. Symbols (-, 0, +) denote (Table 6) prey species that are avoided, less preferred, and more preferred respectively, according to their availability (based on 95%, Bonferroni confidence intervals).