Saturday, February 9, 2019

Conservationist Studies Mountain Lion Behavior with 30 Trail Cameras

News Link

Observes that mountain lion attacks are rare and the few that do are when the mountain lion does not recognize you as human. That is certainly the case for juvenile mountain lions that have either a genetic defect or its mom didn't train it enough or correctly to differentiate people from prey. In my mind, recognition of people is a learned trait reinforced by bad experiences that is handed down from one generation of mountain lions to the next. I am pretty sure if humans were passive and docile when attacked that mountain lions would happily make people part of their diet. There have been a few cases where mountain lion attacks have happened when hikers have stumbled upon a cat eating a deer. These are mature mountain lions that would otherwise avoid people and attack to protect their food stash.

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