Fresh furry face joins zoo
Keeper hopes new cougar will ‘be a favourite’
Ready for a closeup?
The Toronto Zoo has the purr-fect photogenic subject for you.
Halfway down the Canadian Domain hill, visitors will find a furry new face at the zoo — Bowen the cougar.
While the cougar enclosure sat empty for nearly two years after the loss of the zoo’s previous big cat, Bailey, it’s now home to a spry young guy, about two years old, who joined the zoo earlier this year from a B.C. facility.
“I think he’ll be a favourite,” one of his keepers, Josh Narjes, said recently. “He’s so friendly. He really likes people, he wants to come over and say, ‘Hi.’ ”
Bowen has been acclimatizing to his new enclosure — revamped for his young age, with plenty of things to jump and climb on.
Bowen was experiencing some mobility issues with muscles in his back legs, so Narjes and his Wildlife Care team colleagues have been working with Bowen with “exercise, developing muscles, getting him moving around.”
His pad includes things like logs, perches and hammocks where he can work on all the things a cougar needs to do, like climbing, balancing and jumping.
But Narjes notes with a laugh: “He’s still kind of clumsy.”
Visitors may notice Bowen exhibiting behaviours similar to pet cats, and it’s easy to see how the friendly felines we know and love are related to this much-bigger predator.
Bowen enjoys dozing in his hammock and playing with toys, just like a pet cat.
He has been settling in quickly in his new home and is eager to learn.
“He’ll probably be a dream to train — he’s very friendly,” Narjes said.
Zoo staff will work with Bowen to teach him how to accept vaccines, get blood drawn and other health-related procedures.
For now, he’s just getting to know his space and observing all the people who come to see him.
While he’s fully grown, cougars are considered a medium-sized cat, and he’s a little on the smaller end for a male cougar. (Bowen is about 55 kilos, and the smallest male cougars can be around 50 kilos.)
“He may fill out a bit more, but he’s pretty well full grown,” Narjes said.
While we may not have too many cougars close to home here in Toronto, they did once live in this area.
They’re still found in the wild in the western third of Canada and all the way down into South America.
Cougars are opportunistic hunters and their diets can vary based on where they call home.
They’ll typically hunt and catch large prey and eat a whole bunch at once, and then not eat for a few days, so the nutrition team at the Zoo is working on creating the best meal plan for Bowen.
“The bulk of his meat is horse meat,” Narjes said. “It’s a lot leaner than beef.”
Commercially farmed beef has a higher fat content, so it tastes good to humans, but it’s not a healthy food for animals.
“We’re also trying different things, like knuckle bones,” Narjes added.
Bowen will have to use his powerful jaw to get the meat off the bones, just like he would in the wild.
Narjes said the zoo’s nutrition team does a lot of work to calculate how many calories, vitamins, minerals and nutrients each animal needs, and prepares their diet especially to meet those needs.
“And then I get to give it to him and watch him eat it,” Narjes said.
Bowen has also been getting some enrichment activities, and one of his favourites so far has been fur collected when his bison neighbours shed their wooly coats.
“He was licking it, rolling in it, he really had a good time,” Narjes said.
The Toronto Zoo is open daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.