1)At the age of 16, Kyle McCarthy cradled the limp body of a snow leopard. He had helped his father, Dr. Tom McCarthy, track the big cat among boulders in Mongolia and then use a drug to make it go to sleep. Dr. McCarthy put a radio collar on the sleeping animal before setting the cat free, unharmed.

(2)“You can’t hold a snow leopard and not feel like that’s probably one of the peaks in your life,” says Kyle. “The animal is so powerful when it’s awake, so beautiful, and so rarely seen.”

(3)Kyle became a wildlife biologist like his father. Years later, he traveled to Kyrgyzstan in central Asia to help protect snow leopards.

What is the central idea of paragraphs 1-3?
Seeing a snow leopard at a young age affected one scientist for his entire life.

A snow leopard is an extremely powerful and beautiful animal.

Scientists use a type of drug to make an animal go to sleep when they are studying it.

Older children often go along with their scientist parents on research trips.