‘Mountain lion’ in Lehigh County turned out to be feral cat
Call it a case of mistaken identity. The animal spotted last Sunday in Lehigh County, prompting Pennsylvania State Police to caution residents about a possible mountain lion sighting, was just a big, feral house cat.
At 11:45 a.m. Oct. 15, state police were informed about a photo that had been taken from a second-story apartment window about 90 feet from an animal alleged to be a mountain lion.
“The image captured a large feline, possibly a mountain lion,” according to the police report. Police advised residents to avoid the animal and said the Pennsylvania Game Commission had been contacted and advised of the situation.
By the time furbearer biologist Thomas
Keller arrived on the scene, news that Pennsylvania police had issued a mountain lion warning had gone viral and been reported nationwide. Mr. Keller visited the apartment and recreated the photo, making patterns of the animal based on the photo’s dimensions and comparing them with lifesize cutouts of a mountain lion, bobcat and domestic cat. Bobcats live throughout Lehigh County but are less than half the size of a mature cougar. The agency released its finding Monday afternoon.
“Based on the photos taken using the cutout in comparison to the original photo, it appears that the animal in question was a large feral house cat,” said a Game Commission spokesman.
Once an alpha predator stretching from Michigan to Maine to South Carolina, the mountain lion was one of the first casualties of European settlement in the U.S. Its primary prey — woodland bison, Eastern elk and whitetailed deer — were driven to regional extinction by deforestation and overhunting. By the end of the 1800s, fears and prejudices about big, scary wild cats led to a virtual pogrom that killed off Pennsylvania’s Eastern cougars. Pennsylvania’s last wild mountain lion is believed to have been killed in Berks County in 1874. Its preserved remains are on display at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.
Yet unconfirmed cougar sightings continued for decades.
In 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reviewed scientific and commercial information to determine the status of the Eastern cougar. In 2018,
USFWS declared the animal to be extinct, with a small number of a subspecies surviving in Florida. At the time, many biologists, including Game Commission staff, said they were certain that no wild breeding populations had existed in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states for 100 years or more.
Nevertheless, about 1,000 sightings of big cats with long tails have been reported in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other nearby states since the start of the 20th century. A mountain lion sighting was reported in lower Michigan in 2018, and 12 cougars were confirmed on the state’s Upper Peninsula in 2020.
Western mountain lions —- which live from the Rocky Mountain states to the Pacific Coast — have recently encroached on California suburbs, where attacks on pets have become common. About 20 confirmed attacks on humans have occurred in California in more than a century of record-keeping, said the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Three were fatal.
The Game Commission receives about 100 reports of cougar sightings each year, including some from close to home. In 2007, a hiker in Brady’s Run Park near Beaver Falls in Beaver County reported cougar tracks pressed into the snow. The prints melted beyond recognition before they could be examined by the Game Commission.
A week earlier, a big cat was allegedly seen in northern Allegheny County. Two years earlier, a suspected cougar was seen several times and witnessed by police officers in Beaver County. Many cougar sightings have been reported in the woodlands and former strip mines of Indiana County.
In 2021, some Squirrel Hill residents were alarmed when a photograph posted to a social media site was alleged to be a cougar prowling the neighborhood. The photo included a structure in the background providing scale, showing an animal that appeared to be about 4 feet long.
“No way,” said a Game Commission official who examined the fuzzy photo. He identified the mystery beast as an orange house cat.
Mountain lions are the fourth-largest feline species, standing 24-35 inches at the shoulder. Adult males grow to nearly 8 feet in length and can weigh 117-220 pounds. Females average 64-141 pounds and are about 6½ feet in length from the nose to the tip of the tail. Tails are disproportionately long as compared to the body, stretching from 25-37 inches. The cougar of Squirrel Hill didn’t meet the description.
In recent years, genetic research has provided better tools for the identification of wildlife. Using DNA analysis, scientists can sometimes pinpoint species, family lines and geographic points of origin. Material evidence including scat and fur collected from samples found in Central and Eastern United States has confirmed that in some cases the species was Puma concolor, a cougar. Well-preserved material tested in clinical conditions has shown:
• In 1992, a healthy cougar of South American origin was shot in Quebec, and a cougar kitten of South American origin was found in Kentucky.
• In 1993, an emaciated cougar of South American origin was discovered in Saratoga, N.Y.
• In 2000, cougars were found in Illinois.
In 2011, a mountain lion was released from captivity in South Dakota and migrated to Connecticut, a journey of some 1,500 miles. The cat was killed by a vehicle while crossing a highway. DNA tests confirmed it originated in South Dakota.
No wild breeding mountain lions are believed to live in Pennsylvania. Debate continues about whether Western cougars are migrating east. But there is no suspicion that South American cougars are coming north.
Cougars found in North America with South American origins were likely shipped as kittens to be sold as pets. Exotic pets are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In 2016, wildlife biologists and management agencies from states with ample mountain lion habitat — Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York — studied the ramifications of reintroducing mountain lions to their original range throughout the Northeast. All of those states are struggling with high deer density.
Published in Conservation Letters, a journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, the study examined the socioeconomic benefits of reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions by recolonizing cougars to manage deer populations. The study estimated that within 30 years of reintroduction, the big cats could help reduce deer-vehicle collisions by 22%, preventing 21,400 human injuries and 155 fatalities and saving $2.13 billion in costs.