With David Attenborough celebrating his 100th birthday this year, I wanted to share a bit about how he inspired me through the ground breaking work that he’s done. I grew up watching his documentaries, listening to his iconic voice and further fuelling my passion for the environment as I got older. Whenever I watched him on TV, I was always in awe of the exciting adventures he went on, witnessing nature’s phenomena up close. Figure 1. David Attenborough. I have watched many David Attenborough documentaries, but his Natural Curiosities series remains as a top favourite of mine. It’s a bit more obscure compared to his other documentaries, as the whole purpose of the series is to investigate strange evolutionary occurrences and mysteries of the animal world. One episode I thoroughly remember was about Clever Hans, a horse living in the early 20th century that was able to answer mathematic problems by tapping the answer with his hooves. Attenborough set off to figure out whether Hans,...
The beautifully spotted snow leopard, also known as the "ghost of the mountains," is currently listed as a vulnerable species on the IUCN red list . It's hard to make firm estimates of their populations due to the species’ secretive nature, low density, and occupancy in distant territories , as these characteristics cause lower detection rates. Within recent years, studies have confirmed that snow leopard populations have actually started to reappear in some areas. An example of this is Sagarmatha National Park located in Nepal, where snow leopards were known to have disappeared from the area but ended up reappearing in 2003 after an ongoing absence of 25 years . However, it's important to note that even though populations may be reappearing in certain areas, they're still decreasing in others. There may have been localized extinctions in land areas where the Soviet Union used to be, and surveys in Pakistan have also indicated that the number of snow leopards are...