The snow leopard was first described by Western science in 1775, when it was mentioned in a letter written by the Swedish naturalist Peter Simon Pallas. Pallas had received a snow leopard skin from a Russian fur trader, who had obtained it from the Altai Mountains in present-day Russia. Pallas named the animal "once", which is derived from the Mongolian word "ungee", meaning "white leopard".
In the following years, several other naturalists and explorers contributed to the knowledge of the snow leopard, including the British naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson, who described the snow leopard's hunting behavior and habitat in the Himalayas in 1829, and the Russian explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky, who collected several snow leopard specimens during his expeditions to Central Asia in the 1870s and 1880s.
The snow leopard was not widely known to the general public until the early 20th century, when it began to be featured in books and magazine articles about wildlife. The first successful photograph of a snow leopard was taken in 1931 by the American adventurer and photographer George Schaller, who spent many years studying the snow leopard in the mountains of Pakistan and Nepal.
Today, the snow leopard is still a relatively elusive animal, and it is rarely seen by humans. However, thanks to the efforts of conservationists and researchers, we now know much more about this magnificent creature and its habitat.