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Saberrex β Snow Leopard
by-nc-sa
Published: 2016-07-25 02:05:48 +0000 UTC; Views: 622; Favourites: 17; Downloads: 5
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Description
Panthera uncia. The most beautiful of all the big cats, and the closest living relative to the tiger. The snow leopard is the wraith of the big cats; so elusive and sneaky that in its high-altitude, icy world, it is almost impossible to spot. Truly, it is the ghost of the slopes. And of all the big cats, it is the least likely to attack humans; only 2 attacks have ever been recorded for snow leopards on humans, and both were sick individuals; one was old and weak, the other rabid. I've seen snow leopards up close in zoos, and I can attest to their beauty. They really are gorgeous, and they are actually the cat that can leap the furthest out of all the genus panthera; 50 feet in one forward bound! Though endangered, their numbers have been rising; they have gone from 3900-6300 to around 4700-8700, a rise that marks a success so far in protecting this most beautiful animal. ΒRelated content
Comments: 16
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Tell me, if you were going to make this creature into a movie monster, how would you do it?
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Why not? Were I to do it, I'd play up the 'wraith of the big cats' thing you mentioned: make it able to climb up icy surfaces like a spider, extend its already-impressive physical abilities, give it the ability to cloak the area around it in mist. In snowstorms, its body would start to blur and smudge, making it look like nothing more than a vaguely cat-shaped smudge in the snow.
The film itself would be quite a departure from the normal monster movie: the characters would be a team of cryptozoologists looking for this mysterious cat, while the antagonists would be a group of poachers. They'd meet with some monks who warn against trying to harm the creature. They recount a story of two groups of warriors hunting the beast: one party sought its pelt as a trophy, and were 'swallowed up' by the mountains as punishment, while the second were accompanying a sick man who wanted to see it for himself before he died; they never saw the entire cat, but they left the mountain stronger than they were before, with the sick man somehow being cured of his illness. The poachers laugh it off and go out, but the mountains apparently took offense to the plan to kill their prized treasure.
The weather itself seems to work against them: freak avalanches that bury their tents before stopping right in front of them, poachers being whisked away by whipping winds only to be found as frozen corpses as soon as visibility clears, their bodies pierced by webs of icicles seemingly bursting from their skin at all angles. The cryptozoologists face similar problems, but much less severe; they do get hurt by these disasters, but never permanently so, instead managing to bond with one another and learn to work together effectively. All this time, we don't actually see the cat: just depictions of it in the monastery and fleeting traces of it-short scenes from its point of view as it watches the two groups, a flash of fur in the corner of the screen, a few footprints, etc. Finally, there's only one poacher left: as he screams in maddened rage at the scientists, holding one of their number at knifepoint, we see a faint rush of wind streaking towards the crazed poacher; it brushes against him, and he falls to the ground dead. The cryptozoologists decide that the leopard is best left alone, and finally depart; as they leave, one of the team, who had revealed earlier that he had an incurable form of cancer, learns that he has been cured. As they leave, the same snow flurry collects atop a large boulder, and we finally see the whole cat. It watches silently as the group's plane soars away, gives a small nod of respect, and then dissolves into wind and snow.
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The snow leopard is a creature of mystique and beauty to me. It has not nor likely ever will attack a human of its own volition unless forced by extreme circumstances, which has only occurred twice in history. I feel to play upon it as a monster is wrong. We don't need a creature with such grace and power like that to become a monster.Β
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Who said that monsters couldn't be graceful? Look at the Β behemoth from Steven King's The Mist.
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That wasn't a monster that struck me as graceful.
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I tried to go with a 'beautiful but deadly' angle - it's not so much the cat itself that's dangerous as the conditions of its environment.
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This is a very accurate depiction of this beautiful cat.Β
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