India, Oct. 8 -- Snow leopards (Panthera uncia), the elusive big cats of High Mountain Asia, have very low genetic diversity, a new study led by Stanford University has found. This puts their future at risk.

Katie Solari, a research scientist in biology in Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences, along with Stanford biologist Dmitri Petrov and colleagues extensively collaborated with researchers and wildlife officials from 11 countries to come to the conclusion.

Because these cats live in highly inhospitable terrain, only four have been fully genetically sequenced before this study, a statement by Stanford noted. "This study brings that number to 41, including 35 wild snow leopards and six from zoos around the world," it added.

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