Category: Cougar Stories

Posted on

Cougar leaping fence

Cougars are built for short-term speed, agil­ity and strength. Their skelet­al struc­ture is held to­geth­er by muscle more than lig­a­ments, which makes them in­cred­ibly flexible.

Much of the big cat’s strength is found in their power­ful rear legs, which can pro­pel them five metres straight up from a stand­still and 14 metres ho­ri­zont­ally onto the back of their prey.

To view an ex­ample of a cou­gar ef­fort­less jump­ing, watch this short trail cam­era clip. Note how the cou­gar by­passes the lower part of the fence to eas­ily bound over as two metre high section.

 

Can you see this cougar peeking over the backyard fence? Jumping over it would be as easy as for the big cat as blinking an eye.
Can you see this cou­gar peek­ing over the back­yard fence? Jumping over it would be as easy as for the big cat as blink­ing an eye.

 

Posted on

Wild female cougar adopts orphaned cubs

Cougar cubs lead pre­cari­ous lives. Other pred­at­ors – even male cou­gars — prey on them. They can also be­come sick or get in­jured. But per­haps the worst thing that can hap­pen is los­ing their mom.

This three-week old cougar kitten was photographed in southern California by Eric York while working for UC Davis Wildlife Health Center.
This three-week old cou­gar kit­ten was pho­to­graphed in south­ern California by Eric York while work­ing for UC Davis Wildlife Health Center.

Most young adult cou­gars head out on their own when they’re 18-months to two-years old. By that time they have rudi­ment­ary hunt­ing skills and are usu­ally large enough to take down prey on their own. Even then some young cou­gars don’t survive.

But if mom is shot by a hunter, hit by a car or killed tak­ing down prey when her cubs are young­er than 18-months old, their chances of sur­viv­al de­crease dramatically.

Cougars are se­cret­ive car­ni­vores so much about their day-to-day lives and re­la­tion­ships with each oth­er re­mains un­known. So it was a real sur­prise when re­search­ers with Panthera’s Teton Cougar Project in Jackson Hole, Wyoming dis­covered a fe­male cou­gar with young of her own had ad­op­ted three orphaned cubs.

Teton Cougar Project dir­ect­or, Howard Quigley, tells the story in New Insight into Cougar Behaviour.

 

Posted on

Cougars are excellent swimmers

Although many cats don’t like wa­ter, cou­gars are ex­cel­lent swim­mers. And they don’t just go for little dips either. One, wear­ing a GPS col­lar, was tracked swim­ming 6.5 kilo­metres from down­town Nanaimo to Gabriola Island.

In the last two years I’ve seen four YouTube videos fea­tur­ing cou­gars swim­ming off Vancouver Island and the BC main­land. And in each video, the big cat went straight for the boat.

Was it curi­ous or had its chase in­stinct been triggered by the fast mov­ing ob­ject? Who knows, per­haps it just wanted to hitch a ride.

As curi­ous as you may be, there are doc­u­mented cases of cou­gars at­tempt­ing to climb into mov­ing boats so it’s best not to get too close.

A friend who loves to kayak asked what she should do if she saw a cou­gar swim­ming to­wards her kayak. My ad­vice: pray, pre­pare your bear spray and paddle like hell!

This is one of my fa­vour­ite swim­ming cou­gar videos. (It’s at the end of the article.)

Posted on

Cougars are strong…smart too

Cougars are ex­quis­itely built killing ma­chines cap­able of tak­ing down an an­im­al sev­en times their size. But this strength can’t be fully ap­pre­ci­ated un­less witnessed.

A 2001 video taken in New Mexico shows a 70-kilo­gram (150-pound) cou­gar tack­ling a 120-kilogrom (265-pound) mule deer.maxablebcr2.jpg

The strength of the cou­gar as it takes down this deer is in­cred­ible. Even be­ing kicked re­peatedly in the head by sharp hooves does not per­suade the cat to let go. And when its ini­tial at­tempts to kill the deer don’t work, the cou­gar em­ploys a new strategy.

Don’t for­get to watch the tip of the cougar’s tail.