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Snow leopards, or "ghosts of the mountains" as they are known in some parts of the world, have earned an almost mythical status for their stealthiness and camouflage skills. The big cats are so perfectly adapted to their harsh mountainous habitat that even spotting them against a rocky backdrop can be near impossible. However, dramatic footage that recently surfaced from India’s Himalayas reveals that even these most elusive cats occasionally show themselves (and sometimes even put on a spectacular hunting display).

FULL TITLE: Spot the predator: Would YOU be able to tell if a snow leopard was stalking you? Try to find the animal in these photographs These rare photographs of wild snow leopards reveal just why the elusive animal is so hard to spot. Pictured strolling across the face of a mountain, the endangered big cat is barely visible against a background of rock and shale. Experienced wildlife photographer David Jenkins, 41, braved temperatures of over minus 20 degrees centigrade in an effort to get a glimpse of the creature. Scroll down for video But after two weeks enduring the...

A camera trap snapped the first-ever pictures of the elusive snow leopard in Uzbekistan. Even better, it caught not one, but two of the endangered cats on camera. The new images of the cats released by conservation groups Panthera and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) confirm that there are at least two individual snow leopards in the Gissar Nature Reserve, a protected part of the Pamir Mountains that can be visited only for scientific research. Uzbekistan, which is about the size of California, is one of 12 countries in Asia where snow leopards still roam through rugged mountainous terrain. It's estimated...

Two snow leopards were captured, fitted with satellite collars, and released for the first time in Afghanistan by a team of Wildlife Conservation Society conservationists and Afghan veterinarians conducting research during a recent expedition. The team successfully captured and released the male snow leopards on May 27 and June 8 respectively. Each cat was weighed, measured, fitted with a Vectronix satellite collar, and DNA samples were taken. After DNA samples, the healthy snow leopards were released and headed up the Hindu Kush Mountains in good condition. The big cats will be tracked by WCS to better understand their behavior and...

The brand new 27" iMac is suffering from major problems with video graphics while Windows 7 operating on the same machines is working fine. According to Apple bulletin boards, users started to notice that their Macs' pretty screens were running movies in browsers that were choppier than the North Sea in winter. With no help from Apple, Mac Fans have been trying to piece together what could be causing such a kerfuffle. Initially the thought was that it was probably some cheap Chinese component which was failing or overheating. However when Windows 7 appeared on the scene and users started...

Hackers just like the PC more. Regardless of which side you're on (though as a true computing enthusiast, you shouldn't be taking sides), you've heard the arguments back and forth on the which operating system is truly safer – Mac OS X or Windows. It is of the opinion of Charlie Miller, a well known Mac security guru, that even Snow Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X, isn't as safe as Windows. One key point is that Snow Leopard still doesn't have ASLR, or address space layout randomization, which randomly arranges the position of key data making it...

Snow Leopard lacks security features that are built in to Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, a noted Mac researcher has said. Dubbed ASLR, for address space layout randomisation, the technology randomly assigns data to memory to make it tougher for attackers to determine the location of critical operating system functions, and thus make it harder for them to craft reliable exploits. "Apple didn't change anything," said Charlie Miller, of Baltimore-based Independent Security Evaluators, the co-author of The Mac Hacker's Handbook, and winner of two consecutive "Pwn2own" hacker contests. "It's the exact same ASLR as in Leopard, which means...

Back on Friday we published Mac OS X 10.6 benchmarks and found it to offer some terrific performance improvements , but at the same time, there were a few notable regressions. Apple engineers have been working hard at pushing technologies like Grand Central Dispatch (GCD), OpenCL, full 64-bit support, and other changes to their OS X stack to bolster its performance capabilities and reduce the overall footprint. Now that we have tested Mac OS X 10.6, we are seeing how its performance compares to that of Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" will be out in October and does have...

With Snow Leopard, Apple has streamlined and simplified the process of installing Mac OS X. While older versions of OS X made you decide what kind of installation you wanted to perform before you even specified what to install, Snow Leopard's installer gives you a single installation path. It's considerably easier.Gone, for example, is the old Clean Install option--which moved your existing OS and system add-ons to a Previous Systems folder and installed a fresh copy of the OS, requiring a good amount of tweaking and transferring of files afterward. Instead, Snow Leopard provides a more intelligent installation process...

Intego Spots Malware Blocker in Snow Leopard August 25th, 2009 at 5:40 PM by Bryan Chaffin Snow Leopard contains a malware blocker, according to Mac antivirus software developer Intego. The company posted a screenshot of a warning dialog box on its blog that it said was from Snow Leopard, the Mac OS X 10.6 upgrade Apple is shipping on Friday. "We're not sure yet exactly how this works," the firm wrote, "but the above screen shot shows this feature working with a download made via Safari, detecting a version of the RSPlug Trojan horse in a downloaded disk image." If...

Steve Jobs first announced Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) was in development at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in 2008. It was a chance for Apple to take stock of where it was with OS X. There would be no major innovations, but plenty of refinements: it would install quicker, take up less disk space, and the user experience would be improved through Apple's attention to detail. Fast forward to WWDC 2009, and the version of Snow Leopard being prepared has everything Apple promised, and more. Refinement rather than revolution, then, is the watchword for Snow Leopard. We've picked...

Excerpt - With the 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) beginning next week, MacRumors provides this Rumor Roundup as a summary of major rumors circulating around the Mac Web before the big event (previous roundups: 2007, 2006). The 3G iPhone The 3G iPhone will be announced at WWDC 2008. There really can be no doubt. It's certainly been no secret that the iPhone will eventually adopt 3G technology. When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone in January 2007, he specifically said (video clip) that Apple plans on making "3G phones and all sorts of amazing things in the future". Fast forward...

Snow leopards are protected Police in north Pakistan have shot dead a rare snow leopard, blamed for killing six women in the past two weeks. The ageing animal was caught in a trap, with a goat as bait, but was shot when it tried to escape, police in the town of Abbotabad told the BBC. Fear had spread through the area after the attacks. The last was on Friday. Abbotabad police chief Feroz Shah said he was sure it was the leopard that had killed the women, all of whom had been gathering firewood in forests. "It's a huge animal...