Tag: cougar

A Colorado Woman May Have Been Killed By A Puma, But We Should Wait For The Facts

There are lots of questions but very few answers so far related to the death of a woman on a hiking trail in northern Colorado. Authorities have not confirmed a puma attack.

A woman who was found dead on a hiking trail may have been killed by a mountain lion, state authorities say.

Several hikers were making their way along the Crosier Mountain Trail in northern Colorado at noon on Thursday when they came upon a woman laying on the ground and a puma about 100 yards away from her, according to police.

The hikers made noise and tossed rocks to scare the cat off, then one of them — a medical doctor — checked the woman and found no vital signs.

They notified authorities, who launched a massive search by air and ground, closing down the neighboring trails and bringing search dogs into the effort.

The search teams found and killed two mountain lions, who will be autopsied to determine if either had human remains in their stomachs. If they do not, rangers and police will keep looking, as they say Colorado law requires them to euthanize animals who have killed humans, local news reports said.

Pumas, also known as mountain lions, cougars, catamounts, screamers and many other names, are the widest-ranging cats on Earth, found throughout South America, the west of the US, and southern Canada. Credit: Charles Chen/Pexels

It’s important to note that there are no autopsy reports so far. Police don’t know how the woman died, if she was killed by the puma spotted near her, or if the animal approached after her death.

If an investigation does determine a puma was responsible, it’s crucial to place the incident in context. The last recorded fatal mountain lion attack in Colorado was in 1999, and was not confirmed. The victim, a three-year-old boy named Jaryd Atadero, wandered away from the hiking group he was with and was never seen again.

Search efforts in the following days and weeks didn’t turn up anything, but in 2003 another group of hikers found part of Atadero’s clothing. His partial remains were later found nearby.

Police said Atadero could have been killed by a mountain lion, but there’s no definitive evidence and his cause of death remains a mystery.

Aside from that incident, there have been 11 recorded, non-fatal injuries attributed to pumas in Colorado in the past 45 years despite as many as 5,000 of the wildcats living in the state’s wilderness.

Nationally there is some discrepancy in record-keeping, but most sources agree there have been 29 people killed by mountain lions in the US since 1868. By contrast, more than 45,000 Americans are killed in gun-related incidents per year, about 40,000 Americans are killed in traffic collisions annually, and between 40 and 50 American lives are claimed by dogs per year.

Americans are a thousand times more likely to be killed by lightning than by a puma, according to the US Forestry Service.

Despite their size, pumas are more closely related to house cats and small wild cats. They can meow, but they cannot roar. Credit: Caleb Falkenhagen/Pexels

Cougars are elusive, do not consider humans prey, and the vast majority of the time go out of their way to avoid humans. Most incidents of conflict are triggered by people knowingly or unknowingly threatening puma cubs, or cornering the shy cats.

Despite that, there’s confusion among the general public. Mountain lions are routinely confused with African lions, so some Americans believe they are aggressive and dangerous.

Pumas, known scientifically as puma concolor, are part of the subfamily felidae, not pantherinae, which means they are more closely related to house cats and smaller wildcats than they are to true big cats like lions, tigers, jaguars and leopards.

Pumas can meow and purr, but they cannot roar. Their most distinctive vocalization is the powerful “wildcat scream,” leading to nicknames like screamer.

In the Colorado case, police say they believe the victim was hiking alone. Her name hasn’t been released, likely because authorities need to notify next of kin before making her identity public.

This is a tragedy for the victim and her family, and we don’t wish her fate on anyone. At the same time, we hope cooler heads prevail and this incident does not spark retaliatory killings or misguided attempts to cull the species.

How Four Wildcats Co-Exist In The Jungles Of Guatemala

Jaguars, pumas, ocelots and margays are able to thrive in the same jungles, a unique arrangement that sheds light on how each species lives.

The jungles of Guatemala are teeming with life.

The guttural calls of howler monkeys haunt the rainforest from above, where scarlet macaws hop branches in flashes of red, yellow and blue.

On the forest floor opossums, peccaries, and oversize rodents called pacas move through dense brush, occasionally picked out by the few shafts of light able to break through the canopy. Ocellated turkeys plumed in iridescent copper and emerald advertise themselves to potential mates with thumping sounds, while spider monkeys perch on the weathered stones of long-forgotten Mayan cities that were swallowed by the jungle centuries ago.

As in most tropics, the apex predators are cats — four different species, to be exact. Jaguars sit at the top, unchallenged. Pumas, close in size if not ferocity, also find sustenance in the rainforest alongside ocelots and margays.

Margays are smaller than house cats and resemble tiny ocelots. They’re outstanding climbers, expert hunters, and spend most of their time in trees. Unlike most cat species, which are crepuscular, margays are nocturnal. Credit: Clement Bardot/Wikimedia Commons

How do four medium carnivorous species exist side by side?

By dividing time, space and items on the menu, according to a new study.

Ocelots are extremely adaptable: they’re excellent climbers and swimmers, and can thrive in various environments. Credit: Victor Landaeta/Pexels

The felids hunt at different levels of the jungle at different times of day, and while there’s overlap between prey, each species has its own distinct diet, according to a research team from Oregon State University. Their paper, Niche partitioning among neotropical felids, was published earlier this month in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

As the big kids on the block, jaguars primarily eat peccaries (pig-like ungulates that weigh up to 88 pounds), armadillos, deer and, sadly, ocelots. Apparently membership in Club Felid does not grant the smaller wildcats a pass. Ocelots top out at about 35 pounds, while the largest jaguars weigh in at about 350 pounds, making the smaller cats easy prey.

Pumas opportunistically prey on peccaries and brocket deer, but the majority of their diet is composed of monkeys, both spider and howler. Ocelots and margays naturally go for smaller prey, sticking mostly to rodents and opossums.

As the largest and most powerful cats in the western hemisphere, jaguars are the apex predators of their environment. Credit: Atlantic Ambience/Pexels

While jaguars hunt on the ground and have a well-documented habit of slipping into the water to prey on caiman and crocodiles, pumas, ocelots and margays take advantage of their climbing abilities and lighter frames to reach arboreal prey. That allows pumas, for example, to snag monkeys and arboreal opossum species from the canopy, so they don’t have to compete with jaguars.

The team verified the “spatial, temporal, and dietary niche partitioning” within the Maya Biosphere Reserve by using ground camera traps, arboreal camera traps and fecal samples, which allowed them to confirm the prey each species has been consuming.

Interestingly, margays are the pickiest — or perhaps most limited — of the bunch, preying on only seven species, while the other three cats regularly hunt between 20 and 27 different kinds of animals.

The information gleaned from the study not only helps researchers understand how these species interact with their environment, but also can help guide conservation decisions to safeguard them against extinction.

Pumas, also known as cougars and mountain lions, are adaptable and elusive. Credit: Catherine Harding Wiltshire/Pexels

https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/vertical-hunting-helps-wild-cats-coexist-guatemala%E2%80%99s-forests-study-finds

Wordless Wednesday: They Rule The Night

Cats were built by mother nature to stalk by starlight.

From the African savannas to the Andean mountains, the jungles of the Amazon to the Hollywood hills, and everywhere in suburban America, cats of all types and sizes prowl the night. With eyes that are up to eight times more sensitive in the dark, incredibly sensitive hearing, and whiskers that can pick up the slightest change in air density, felids were built by mother nature to stalk by starlight.

Some cat species are crepuscular, some are nocturnal, but as ambush predators, they’re all at their best when hunting under the cover of darkness.

Image credits, top to bottom: Per Karlson/PVKFoto, Reddit r/natureisf***inglit, Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Preserve, Wikimedia Commons, Steve Winter/National Geographic, National Park Service, Colorado Parks and Wildlife

Wordless Wednesday: The Magnificent, Majestic Puma Concolor

The puma, also known as the mountain lion, cougar, screamer, panther, catamount, suçuarana, pangui, American lion and dozens of other names, looks like a big cat but is genetically closer to our domestic Feline friends.

Credit: Merazonia Animal Refuge of Ecuador

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Credit: Elizabeth Lucas

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Click images for full high resolution versions. Baby puma image credit Elizabeth Lucas. Prints available here.

Bird Flu: Study Warns Virus Has 90% Mortality Rate In Cats, Wild Pumas Succumb To Infection, Sanctuaries On Alert

“If you feed your pet contaminated raw meat or milk, they will likely die. I’m not exaggerating, just giving it to you straight,” one infectious disease specialist warned.

In more disconcerting news from the bird flu front, a new study warns of exceptionally high mortality rates for cats who are infected with the virus.

The study found 89.6 percent of avian influenza cases in cats are fatal, making the virus a virtual death sentence.

That applies to all species of cats, from the true big cats in the panthera genus — tigers, lions, jaguars and leopards — to felines, a broad group that includes domestic cats, lynx, cheetahs, pumas, ocelots, servals, jaguarundis and others.

“We don’t know if the cats are more susceptible than anybody else,” the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Michael Bailey told USA Today. “It’s just the fact they’re exposed to higher viral burdens because of where they go.”

Whether cats are more susceptible is up for debate, but one SPCA chapter said felids of all species are “uniquely vulnerable” to avian influenza because there are so many ways it can be transmitted to them by doing nothing more than what they typically do.

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Cats can be infected by catching and eating birds and mice, drinking raw milk, eating raw meat (including commercial raw pet food), and exposure to infected animals, including cows.

In Washington state, two wild pumas died after contracting the virus from prey, a development Panthera puma director Mark Elbroch called “troubling.”

“It certainly raises eyebrows and makes one wonder: is it indicative of a bigger pattern out of sight?” Elbroch asked, noting pumas are at the top of the food chain in the Pacific northwest.

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To date, as many as 900 cattle herds across the US have tested positive for bird flu, according to the US Department of Agriculture, while two thirds of California’s dairy farms — 660 out of 984 — had confirmed cases as of Dec. 26.

Bird flu was the confirmed cause of death in a house cat from Washington who died after eating Northwest Naturals commercial raw food, which has since been recalled. Three house cats in Texas succumbed to the virus, which they possibly contracted from hunting mice. The bird flu was also responsible for the deaths of two domestic cats in California who drank raw milk, and 20 of 37 wild cats — including a tiger, several pumas, bobcats and a Geoffroy’s cat (pictured at left) — at the Wild Felid Advocacy Center, a sanctuary in Washington.

adorable cream kitten drinking milk outdoors
Contrary to popular belief, cats are typically lactose intolerant. Credit: DHG Photography/Pexels

Veterinarians are warning people to keep their cats indoors and to avoid raw meat diets, which have become more popular in recent years. Cats should not be given cow’s milk anyway, since most are lactose intolerant. As a general rule, kittens should consume milk from their mothers or kitten-specific formula, but should not be given milk from any other source.

“If you feed your pet contaminated raw meat or milk, they will likely die. I’m not exaggerating, just giving it to you straight,” tweeted Dr. Kristen Coleman, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health.

While the west coast accounts for the majority of confirmed bird flu infections, the virus continues to spread. A map from the Centers for Disease Control shows where infections have been verified as of late December:

Credit: Centers for Disease Control

Unfortunately, the bird flu outbreak comes on the heels of a heavily politicized pandemic and a major loss in trust in American institutions like the CDC after efforts to obscure the origins of SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

It’s not clear if the fallout will make Americans less likely to heed warnings about bird flu and other potential viruses, but animal welfare groups and virologists say people can keep their cats safe with a handful of common-sense steps.