This one does not like Calvin Klein

I don’t know if (and I doubt that) Calvin Klein latest technology-based perfume, Obsession for Men, can live up to the expectations it raises. This musky scent is supposed to attract women, run them wild with its potent aroma. However, wildlife photographers in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala found that it could be used to attract jaguars, cougars and pumas to the camera traps used to get pictures of the endangered cats. Apparently, this does not only attract male jaguars, but females also like the cologne from Calvin Klein.

This was so marked that Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo tried it on snow leopards too. This works! Consequently, the Snow Leopard Trust will try it in South Gobi, Mongolia. Remember that snow leopards are so difficult to find in the wild that apart from GPS collars, it may take months for experts before they can find one in some of the most difficult terrains.

I guess that this will soon lead to a Ig Nobel prize in the future. And some nice new photos, too.

Source: Wildlife Conservation Society – Guatemala Program

WebEcoist assembled some nice photos of the nicest big cats.

• Tiger
• White Tiger
• Lion
• Leopard
• Black panther
• Cheetah
• Puma
• Snow Leopard
• Lynx
• Caracal

The Snow Leopard Trust organizes several scientific works related to the snow leopard. In India, Rishi Sharma pilots a program of camera traps aimed at snow leopards. They produced quite superb images, obviously because they were setup not only with data-collection in mind.

Via Snow Leopard Trust.

Cute and timid, isn’t it?

Tambako The Jaguar is the pseudo of a photographer that brings a large number of animal pictures to Flickr. Despite the fact that most of them are photos shot in zoos, let’s appreciate the nice work with big cats, starting with snow leopards.

I am happy to support the Snow Leopard Trust by disseminating their information video:

Automatic hidden camera triggered by movement has shot still frames, half a second apart. The result is this great video of a snow leopard in the wild.

Assistant Director of Science Kim Murray, SnowLeopard.org.

Two cubs born in Melbourne Zoo on December 7th, 2008, started to come out and offer themselves to the eyes of the public.

This is a major event for the zoo.

Most cat babies or cubs are plain cute. But these two have the advantage of also being very elegant in their black-and-white version of the cutest cub.

Source : Melbourne Zoo.

This Google map was created by the Snow Leopard Trust to locate and identify all the zoos in the world that host snow leopards.

Christina Langman is a painter that does a lot of things around big cats and could well be described as a feline artist. You would think that this leads me to invite you to visit her gallery. Yes, I do. But not only that.

You should check her blog: Big Cat Art Blog. She describes her work and the way a painting comes to life brush after brush.

You should also visit other parts of her web life with such interesting things as her Colored Pencil Tutorial where you will find the detailled step-by-step instructions to go from blank paper to something like the following picture (and it’s much more complex than you’d think at first):

Snow Leopard's Eye

A different way to look at big cats.