Xingchao Zhu (China) comes face to face with a Pallas’s cat as the moon sets.
Xingchao tracked a group of Pallas’s cats on the freezing plateau of Inner Mongolia for several days during the Chinese New Year in February 2023. Shortly before dawn, Xingchao managed to make eye contact with this cat, just as it had caught a small bird.
The thick winter coats of Pallas’s cats help them survive at altitudes up to 5,000 metres (16,400 feet). They avoid larger predators by stealth. It’s thought that their low, rounded ears allow them to peer over obstacles while remaining hidden.
Pallas’s cats are spread thinly across central Asia, from Iran in the west to China in the east and north into Russia. Their biggest threats are reduction in numbers of their main prey species, pikas, and habitat loss caused by farming.
China
Xingchao’s main job is being a designer. He’s loved painting since childhood and his major in university was art. All of this made him fall in love with photography after getting his first camera. More than a decade ago he began to focus on wildlife photography, visiting the Tibetan Plateau and Inner Mongolia many times.
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