Acclaimed wildlife filmmakers capture the first intimate portrait of the world’s most elusive cat.

Most big cats do their best to remain hidden from human eyes, but none are quite as adept at this as the snow leopard. These cats lead largely solitary lives, populating the Himalayas at altitudes that offer only about half the oxygen to which humans are accustomed. So when wildlife filmmakers Hugh Miles and Mitchell Kelly set out to film this animal they knew they were in for a challenge.

The filmmakers chose Hemis National Park in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir as their base camp. There they selected a team of native mountaineers and trackers to accompany them into the Himalayas. The team climbed as high as 15,000 feet, tracking the cats via paw prints in the snow and the scented urine that snow leopards use to mark their territory. The group also concealed remote, sensor-activated cameras equipped with infrared light to allow for stealth, night observation of the cats.

After five weeks without a single sighting, the team finally spotted one of the rare cats on a mountain ledge. After several months, the filmmakers had doggedly compiled a growing body of work. The crew filmed close-ups of several cats and identified individuals.

To further improve their understanding of the snow leopards’ complex behavior, the filmmakers turned to Rodney Jackson, director of the Snow Leopard Conservancy. Jackson’s insights helped them achieve greater success in filming snow leopards hunting, courting, and even mating — none of which had previously been captured on film.

In the end, Miles and Kelly accomplished most of their goals, with only one disappointment: they did not find a litter of cubs. At one point, they did spot a female followed by a little youngster. But mother and cub quickly vanished into the snowy realm in which the elusive snow leopard reigns. Buy the DVD. This film premiered January 16, 2005.

The big cats of Africa have always been favored subjects of wildlife filmmakers. But as little as 15 years ago, no one had captured the unforgettable image of a leopard in its ghostly nocturnal stalk. Viewers had never seen intimate portrayals of the sleek and elusive serval, or witnessed the nighttime romps of the beautiful black-eared caracal.

The team of Owen Newman and Amanda Barrett filled those gaps with a series of spectacular breakthrough films in the 1990s. Among the first to apply infrared light and night vision goggles to wildlife studies, they combined technology with intrepid determination and a strong dose of luck, illuminating the cats we hardly knew, and giving us fresh insights into those we only thought we knew, such as lions and cheetahs.

Join the team of Newman and Barrett as they pursue unique and amazing footage of Africa’s five most spectacular cats: cheetahs, leopards, servals, caracals, and lions in Chasing Big Cats. 

To order a copy of Chasing Big Cats, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Chasing Big Cats was originally posted November 2004.

Mysteries and surprises abound in the nocturnal world of Leopards of Yala.

For more than a century, Yala National Park in Sri Lanka has been one of Asia’s most celebrated wildlife preserves, a lush windswept tropical forest rich in rare aquatic birds and abundant with ferocious predators, such as crocodiles and sloth bears. But only in very recent years has Yala’s big cat distinction been brought to light: It contains one of the world’s largest concentrations of leopards. NATURE takes viewers deep into the jungle habitat of these elusive animals, in Leopards of Yala.

Over a period of six years, Jehan Kumara, a businessman from Sri Lanka’s capital city of Colombo, and Dr. Ravi Samarasinha, a physician from the local countryside, devoted their spare time to tracking leopards in Yala. In the course of their work, they are joined by Scottish cameraman Gordon Buchanan, attracted to Yala by the lure of finding the only big cat he had never captured on film.

To order a copy of Leopards of Yala, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Leopards of Yala was originally posted April 2003.