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Cougar Predation
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"A couple of weeks ago I spent a week in the Tetons with my brother on our first wildlife photography trip. The first morning we saw this large male mountain lion sitting near his kill at the north end of the Elk Refuge. We sat and watched him for almost 8 hours before he sat up and slowly retreated into the woods. Thinking that was it for the day and about to pack up we saw a smaller lion (female?) bounding down from the woods towards the carcass! From talking to the locals we realized how lucky we were to see them, a seemingly very rare sight in the Tetons (they also taught us the correct pronunciation of Gros Ventre!). Please excuse the poor quality, it was getting dark, the pictures were shot on a 600mm with a doubler and they were still a pull on my D5. The lions were about 600 yards away."
 *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author By Austin Raishbrook 
Puma (Puma concolor) predation on a water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...us_bubalis ''On 15 April 2008, a 3-month-old female water buffalo calf was killed and consumed by two pumas. Based on the tracks found around the carcass, an adult female puma and one cub visited the carcass. No tracks of jaguars were found near the carcass. The calf was found in a patch of forest inside an allotment where a group of adult female buffalos and their calves were grazing. The carcass was lying on the ground, uncovered, under the shade of a tree and not yet consumed by scavengers (Figure 1). The necropsy indicated multiple marks of wounds inflicted on the throat. The multiple marks match the size and shape of a large carnivore’s bite. The death could have been caused by asphyxiation. The abdominal cavity was opened. Distal portions of several ribs were partially consumed and the hide and muscles of the leftlateral abdominal area were fed upon. We did not find fractures on the skull or other bones. On 16 April, the female puma returned to the carcass and dragged it approximately 10m away, taking it through a four-wired fence to another allotment where the carcass was fed upon again. The puma consumed portions of the ribs and part of the left shoulder.Before its death, the calf was in apparent good nutritional condition but had difficulty moving owing to some hind limb problems. A potential explanation for this puma predation we observed could be related to the calf’s limited mobility together with the energetic needs of the female puma at the time of the encounter. We speculate that, having to provide for her dependent cub, the female puma might have risked an attack towards the buffalo herd and killed the calf.''  *This image is copyright of its original author
Pampas deer hunt, southern Pantanal
 *This image is copyright of its original author By Lucas Leuzinger   *This image is copyright of its original author Cougar taking down a Mule Deer: https://www.instagram.com/p/BurQ8XZgSkE/
https://www.facebook.com/DavisMountains/...456268644/
This is an aoudad (AW-dad), and it’s quite a survivor. Do you notice anything peculiar on its right side? Scars tell stories, and these scars likely tell the story of an attempted takedown by a mountain lion. Certain mountain lions in the Davis Mountains have shown a preference for aoudad, and on average aoudad make up 4% of recorded mountain lion prey in this region. This underscores the importance of protecting mountain lion populations in managing exotic invasive species. For obvious reasons, we’re calling this aoudad ram “Lucky”. Aoudads are a non-native species of sheep/goat that were brought from the northern coast of Africa to the Texas Hill Country after WWII. Aoudads have since exploded in population across Texas, with an estimated 20,000+ across the central, northern and western reaches of the state. We have multiple aoudad herds that range in and around the park. This aoudad was in Limpia Canyon Primitive Area at a water trough.  *This image is copyright of its original author This information is also from Davis Mountains State Park in Texas  *This image is copyright of its original author
(12-11-2020, 01:46 AM)pardusco Wrote: https://www.facebook.com/DavisMountains/...456268644/ This is an excellent find, cougars are great at controlling the numbers of invasive ungulate species across North America. A similar trend can be noticed with feral hogs, at least in Florida they have shown to have had a positive impact in the conservation of Florida panthers that rely on them heavily as a source of food. One large male I posted here some time ago from that same area in Texas, apparently fed in oudad pretty frequently, as a result he was extremely ripped and muscular, they gave him the title "Chuck Norris".
Cattle kill
 *This image is copyright of its original author By Nexus Outdoors
Cougar predation on feral red deer across different sites in Argentina.
From: Un análisis preliminar de causas de mortalidad, mortandad relacionada a capturas y supervivencia en adultos de ciervo colorado en el noroeste de la Patagonia, by Flueck et al.  *This image is copyright of its original author ABSTRACT. The red deer (Cervus elaphus), among the world’s 14 most invasive exotic mammals, hasrecently arrived in Patagonia. Forty-seven deer were captured, marked with radio collars, andmonitored in order to determine survival rates and identify causes of death. Net gunning froma helicopter allowed captures to be evenly distributed through the study area and in a timely manner.The absence of capture related mortality in our study agrees with previously reported low ratesfor this method. Animals were monitored for periods ranging from 5 to 2611 days. Ten animalsprovided censored values due to radio failures or being shot: they survived on average 811 days(SE = 221) after capture. Ten animals experienced natural deaths with an average time alive aftercapture of 413 days (SE = 106): eight were killed by puma (Puma concolor). The remaining 27 animalswere alive for an average of 974 days (SE = 52). Twenty-one percent of the animals died naturallyduring 38.549 deer-days. Using the Kaplan-Meier procedure, the annual survival rates for theyears 2001-2003 were 0.89, 0.91 and 0.92 respectively (n = 47); the average annual survival ratebeing 91%. Although predation was the most important cause of adult mortality, all mortalitysources combined (puma predation, legal and illegal hunting, disease, emigration) have not maintaineddeer population density low enough to prevent food limitation from occurring in the recent past. Cougar with red deer kill from the Luro park, in the pampas of Argentina where red deer are particularly plentiful:  *This image is copyright of its original author Source (12-23-2020, 08:19 AM)Balam Wrote: Cougar predation on feral red deer across different sites in Argentina. More data on the rates of predation on red deer in the Patagonia. From: ECOLOGÍA, IMPACTO Y MANEJO DEL CIERVO COLORADO (Cervus elaphus) EN EL NOROESTE DE LA PATAGONIA, ARGENTINA, by María Andrea Relva & Javier Sanguinetti  *This image is copyright of its original author "Another of the ecological functions affected by red deer in the northeast of the Patagonia is related to the disruption in the predator-prey interactions and the total modifications of the trophic web in the invaded ecosystem. Currently the red deer is a key prey for the cougar (Puma concolor), representing 43% of the consumed biomass of this carnivore (Novaro ey al., 2000)..."
Artificial nightlight alters the predator–prey dynamics of an apex carnivore
Abstract: Artificial nightlight is increasingly recognized as an important environmental disturbance that influences the habitats and fitness of numerous species. However, its effects on wide‐ranging vertebrates and their interactions remain unclear. Light pollution has the potential to amplify land‐use change, and as such, answering the question of how this sensory stimulant affects behavior and habitat use of species valued for their ecological roles and economic impacts is critical for conservation and land‐use planning. Here, we combined satellite‐derived estimates of light pollution, with GPS‐data from cougars Puma concolor (n = 56), mule deer Odocoileus hemionus (n = 263) and locations of cougar‐killed deer (n = 1562 carcasses), to assess the effects of light exposure on mammal behavior and predator–prey relationships across wildland–urban gradients in the southwestern United States. Our results indicate that deer used the anthropogenic environments to access forage and were more active at night than their wildland conspecifics. Despite higher nightlight levels, cougars killed deer at the wildland–urban interface, but hunted them in the relatively darkest locations. Light had the greatest effect of all covariates on where cougars killed deer at the wildland–urban interface. Both species exhibited functional responses to light pollution at fine scales; individual cougars and deer with less light exposure increasingly avoided illuminated areas when exposed to greater radiance, whereas deer living in the wildland–urban interface selected elevated light levels. We conclude that integrating estimates of light pollution into ecological studies provides crucial insights into how the dynamic human footprint can alter animal behavior and ecosystem function across spatial scales. |
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