Snow leopard seen on Mount Everest

Why should you be excited?

Because this is the first confirmed sighting of the rare, elusive cat on the mountain in over 40 years.

Som Ale, a doctoral student in biology at the University of Illinois, photographed the animal (one of the pictures taken by Ale is above) on October 24 of last year in Sagarmatha National Park on the Nepalese side of the mountain.

There are thought to be only 300 to 500 snow leopards in Nepal and an estimated 4,500 to 7,000 of these big cats left in the wild in the entire world.

That population is spread across 12 countries and nearly 775,000 square miles, including some of the most remote regions of the world, from Afghanistan across the Himalayas to Lake Baikal in south central Russia.

Ale saw two animals and the tracks of two others as well.

In the late 1970s Peter Matthiessen ventured into the Himalayas on a five–week long journey in search of the snow leopard; his 1978 book, "The Snow Leopard," won the National Book Award.

But he never saw a snow leopard.

[via CNN.com and the New York Times]