Historically, many traditional martial arts styles (China, Japan & Korea) have applied concepts developed from studying the way animals hunt, stalk prey  and fight in their disciplines and some have made them primary to the way they fight and central to their art's philosophy. These 'Animal Styles' are scattered about around the world of martial arts. They range throughout China (Northern, Central & Southern), to Indonesia, and Malaysia, even Africa, and beyond. Most animal styles are only an imitation of animal movement, or perhaps the style is just loosely associated, in symbolic terminology, with no actual direct study and adaptation of the animal concepts related to combat. But the ancient reasoning, originally, for imitating the animals’ fighting, was because it was believed that in order to survive in the harsh natural environment, all the animals maintained a natural talent and skill for fighting. It is in some of the Northern Schools that the actual 'Spirit' of the animal is manifest.

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This art, the SnowTiger Combat Systems (STCS), is primarily an 'Animal System' combat art and is based upon the belief that there are nine natural, human essences, referred to as Psycho-physiological Types (derived from body build, nervous system dynamics, spiritual type), and correlated together in the ancient ways and patterns of animal combat as practiced in Shaolin. In times past, the great sage masters looked upon the world of nature to symbolically manifest this understanding and sought vivid examples of behavior. STCS, in different from what is primarily seen as 5-animals of Shaolin, is quite specific in its expression of the various animal fighting arts that are inherent in SnowTiger and have been noticed as remarkably different from the current Shaolin expression of animal systems. The SnowTiger practice of and expression of the various animal systems is very violent, as expressed by the animals in the wild, as they hunt prey or kill for defense. This is NOT what is traditionally seen today from Shaolin.