Snow Leopard Cub Starts Physical Therapy to Help Her Learn to Walk

Snow leopards are an important species for us here at the Bronx Zoo because they're endangered in the wild. Farmers often hunt them because they think the snow leopards are taking their animals as prey. If you went to Pakistan to view snow leopards in the wild, you would be really lucky if you got any kind of a view like this. We're really pleased that we had a snow leopard cub born at the Bronx Zoo four weeks ago. Come on, chubby. Oh my god, you're too cute. Okay. The keepers are noticing that something's not quite right with this animal. Anytime we have an animal born, we always do an exam. Typically, we can wait eight weeks. We're going to go in a little earlier and see what we can find out. Currently, this snow leopard is not at the age where it would be getting up and walking, but it should be crawling. Its rear legs should be tucked in underneath, and it should be crawling like this. Instead, what's happening is its rear legs are spread out to the side, and it's crawling like this. Let's get her anesthetized so that we can start the x-rays. Let's start with her on her back. Let's focus on the hips. I'm going to try to pull them in. On the x-rays, everything looks pretty good. We're not seeing that there's problems with her joints. It looks like the bones are growing correctly. They're not curved. They're not splintered. Do you think that's a mechanical injury or congenital? I think it's something that's happening as she's developing. It may be related to the weight, too. It's not really clear why this may be happening in this cub. One theory that I have is that typically, snow leopards have more than one cub at a time. In this case, we have just the one cub, and so she's getting all the milk that she wants and probably is growing a little bit faster, a little bit heavier, and so it's just harder and harder for the cub to really bring those legs underneath and gain the strength in the way that it needs to. Is there any chance that that's going to self-correct? Self-correct? No. Whether we could go in there and do physical therapy on her with her living with the mom is the question. It was important for the mom and the cub to stay bonded, and we don't want to interfere with that bond because it affects the health of the cub, but if we can't get her legs to be corrected, she will never be able to walk. Over the last few days, we've tried a lot of different methods to try to get this cub to put her legs in the right spot, and today we have Dr. Alvarez from the Animal Medical Center who specializes in animal rehabilitation, and she can hopefully give us some pointers as to where to go next. Let's watch how she's functioning in the device that you have right now. Does she ever rise higher on her forelimbs? If we help her. If you help her. So these are postural tests, just to see if they're aware of where their limbs are in space. Normally what she should do, what she may do in the front, is hop. Yeah, there she goes. So that's normal. So I just want to try something. If we support her, how much better she might be able to ambulate. Oh, she's much better functioned on the left and the right. Okay, there you go. So one potential thing we might be able to device for her is a little harness, almost like the marionette that you've made for that bird before, so that she has some sessions where we're supporting her sternum. She's so heavy, and I really, I think this is a big component of her condition. All right, so let's try and see what you do without your hobbles. Does this hurt her? No, it shouldn't hurt. Shouldn't hurt, right? No, not at all. Based on what I'm seeing with the cub today, it does sound like it might be similar to the condition in dogs, which is swimmer syndrome. With swimmer syndrome, the muscles that are weak are the adductors in the inside of her thigh, which is why they can't get those limbs underneath them. So walking, it looks more like swimming because the legs are splayed to the side. Puppies or kittens that are born with swimmer syndrome, they're frequently larger in size than they're meant to be, so they're carrying more weight on their body. Oh, you definitely feel that. I think your sciatic nerve is fine. My prognosis for this snow leopard is optimistic. I don't want to say that she will definitely recover, but in a period of approximately 30 to 40 days, we should see some significant improvement. What she needs more than anything is strengthening, so if we can get her up on her feet and mobilize. I mean, you saw the difference when I supported her. I mean, she was really able to mobilize so much better. And then if you can combine a little bit of your hobbles and maybe even that harness, this should be a fairly good therapy plan for her. It's really nice to hear the hobbles are working from somebody who's really done it and really has that personal experience. I was hoping that she was going to say we'd see improvement in a week or two weeks, but 30, 40 days is still not a lot of time in the overall life of the snow leopard. Last week, one of the things the rehabilitation specialist, Dr. Alvarez, recommended for this snow leopard cub was a couple of harnesses, one to support her front half and another to support her back half. There are some commercially available harnesses. Unfortunately, none are quite snow leopard specific for exactly what we needed, hence the trip to the pet store yesterday and then being here on my weekend sewing snow leopard clothing. One of the important features of this harness is that we've added strings to it so that we can stand up straight, so we don't also have to go to the physical therapist when we're done with work on the snow leopard. She's moving great on her front limbs. She's bright, she's strong, and got a lot of energy. We just got to slow her down a little bit, try to get those back limbs under there. We're going to try to attach these lateral bands. Her legs still flop out when she walks, so the idea is to try to bring those in so that they're more in a normal position when she's actually walking in the harness, and I don't have to keep pushing them in with my hands. Can't watch. Maybe a little support on the back. As she grows and she gets bigger, there becomes a certain point where she's going to be less tolerant of what we're doing. The faster we get things in the right spot, the better off we're going to be in the long run.