Researcher tells of surprises discovered about mountain lions
PORT ANGELES, Wash.— Cougars are far more social than previously thought, a Sequim scientist told a Peninsula College audience.
A 17-year study in northwest Wyoming found that social tolerance among mountain lions was largely driven by direct reciprocity, Mark Elbroch said in a Studium Generale presentation.
“If one mountain lion tolerated another mountain lion at their kill, that other mountain lion was 7.7 times more likely to tolerate them at one of their future kills,” Elbroch said.
“That was amazing.”
Reciprocity implies that an animal is intelligent enough to remember its past encounter with another animal and use that experience to decide whether or not to interact with the same animal again, Elbroch said.
“In the last 10 years, there has been increasing evidence from many, many species—not just primates—that animals are exhibiting reciprocity,” said Elbroch, who recently moved to Sequim.
Elbroch is a lead scientist for Panthera, a global conservation organization that supports research and sharing science with large audiences.
His hour-long presentation to more than 200 students and community members featured video clips of cougars interacting in the Teton Range near Jackson, Wyoming.
The mountain lion—also known as the cougar, panther, puma and catamount—has been studied closely since 1964.
“The most frequent social behavior of mountain lions is avoiding other mountain lions,” Elbroch said.
“I’m serious. It’s taken us 60 years to learn that.”
New technology such as Global Positioning System collars and motion-triggered cameras are changing long-held beliefs about the solitary predator, Elbroch said.
“Mountain lions interact way more regularly and predictably than we ever thought before,” Elbroch said.
Cougars have 12- to 15-year life spans that present many opportunities for social interaction, Elbroch said.
Female mountain lions spend 82 percent of their lives rearing kittens, he said.
The Wyoming study was conducted in an area with a low mountain lion population density and ample prey such as deer, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, beavers and coyotes.
Early in the study, it was discovered that 60 percent of mountain lion interactions were about food.
“That flies in the face of everything that is supposed to be happening out there,” Elbroch said.
“So we thought we’d take a closer look.”
Elbroch and his fellow researchers developed a hypothesis, predicting that they would not identify a mountain lion network and that cougar interactions would be explained by overlapping territory and kinship.
After studying 134 GPS-collared mountain lions, the researchers found that there was a social network and that all of the cougars shared food at least once.