[HN Gopher] Big cats in urban jungle: LA mountain lions, Mumbai ...
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Big cats in urban jungle: LA mountain lions, Mumbai leopards
Author : samizdis
Score : 36 points
Date : 2022-06-30 10:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Avoidance is the safest strategy, she said. "These big cats are
| shy--they tend to avoid human contact as much as they can.
| They're really extreme introverts of the animal kingdom."
|
| There are lots of large predators that "avoid human contact". I
| think the reason for that is not some intrinsic physical thing,
| but because humans have historically hunted and killed these
| large predators. However, as humans stop killing these predators,
| how long until they lose their fear of humans and see us as prey?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Many humans could fight a mountain lion and win. There are
| circumstances when they will attack but in general we're too
| big to be prey.
| johndhi wrote:
| ... what?
|
| I don't think so
| bombcar wrote:
| Small children can be seen as prey; adult humans are actually
| quite large as animals go, and standing upright makes them
| appear even larger [67] - groups make it even more so.
|
| However, encouraging animals to be "scared" of humans is good,
| because large predators that get used to humans often have to
| be put down.
|
| [67] https://www.reddit.com/r/me_irl/comments/op4u1q/me_irl/
| nescioquid wrote:
| Learning to coexist with the animals, as the article
| mentioned, is probably the best approach.
|
| I once read an article about tiger attacks in India and a
| brilliant tactic people developed: wearing a mask on the back
| of the head. Cats are ambush predators and will attack from
| behind. Apparently having a "face" on the back of your head
| is a good deterrent against cat attacks.
|
| Growing up near Glacier Park, we were given a great deal of
| wilderness survival instruction starting in elementary school
| (this was back in the '70s and '80s). I spent a fair bit of
| time tramping through the woods alone as a child, making
| noise so as not to startle the bears as taught. When I did
| occasionally come upon a bear, it wasn't fussed and continued
| on doing what it was doing. The odd report of a mauling
| elicited sympathy but there seemed to be a tacit assumption
| that the poor fellow screwed up somehow. In all that time, I
| never so much as caught a glimpse of a cat, though they were
| surely around.
|
| Predators getting used to humans happens when they come to
| depend on humans. Glacier Park learned from the "Night of the
| Grizzly" episode by keeping the bears out of food waste and
| considering feeding the bears a serious no-no. Animals that
| were unable or unwilling to return to their normal survival
| strategies were relocated or put down, though the major
| change was educating people and changing their behaviors.
| However, if you've got big cats in your backyard, I imagine
| that population is already stressed.
| [deleted]
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| But leopards can hunt far larger prey than humans.
|
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > The largest prey killed by a leopard was reportedly a male
| eland weighing 900 kg (2,000 lb).[92]
|
| > It is able to take large prey due to its powerful jaw
| muscles, and is therefore strong enough to drag carcasses
| heavier than itself up into trees; an individual was seen to
| haul a young giraffe weighing nearly 125 kg (276 lb) up 5.7 m
| (18 ft 8 in) into a tree
| bombcar wrote:
| They _can_ but it 's relatively abnormal; just like I'm
| sure someone somewhere has been mauled to death by a
| housecat.
| dkarl wrote:
| > how long until they lose their fear of humans and see us as
| prey?
|
| If you're asking about individuals, it already happens that
| individual animals target humans for predation. If you're
| asking about genetic change in populations, it probably won't
| happen, because we identify and kill the rare individuals that
| attack humans.
| bergenty wrote:
| I think the reason is adult humans are too large to be easy
| prey. Yes, they do go after prey that size sometimes but not
| normally because the cost benefit probably doesn't work out.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > because humans have historically hunted and killed these
| large predators
|
| I don't recall any cats in my history classes. Maybe they got
| their education some other way.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Once in a while it happens and people sometimes even have the
| fortitude to kill the puma with their bare hands. Here's a
| recent account [1]
|
| I've always lived in areas with big cats that end up wandering
| into the city or town once in a while. Usually it just ends in
| a ketamine dart and a bunch of videos on social media. I think
| I actually hear about a lot more attacks in North America than
| in Central America for whatever reason. I get the sense that
| they're actually more of a risk to small children, pets, and
| livestock.
|
| If you're out hiking what I've heard a few times is that if you
| smell something that's a lot like a "wet dog" smell in the
| middle of nowhere then you better get the bear spray in your
| hand in case you end up on some cat's menu choices.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umBbQvnShaA
| zem wrote:
| when I was in college in Mumbai (~1995) we had a leopard on
| campus. was a fairly disconcerting few days before they caught
| it. (the campus had a lot of wilderness areas so it was easy for
| it to hide)
| ggm wrote:
| Was there any serious consideration of tag and release? or when
| you say "capture" do you mean catch, tag and release?
|
| Ecologically speaking, it might be better to leave a viable cat
| in place than remove it and make a territory to fight over.
| This is why feral cats in some cities are chipped, speyed and
| released (they cut an ear to mark it sterile)
| wcarron wrote:
| Wow. I'm surprised to learn that over 100 cats were collared
| around LA. As far as I was aware, there were/are only like 7 or 8
| lions in the Angeles National Forest. Great to hear that they're
| significantly more numerous than I'd known.
|
| I spent a lot of time in the ANF while I lived there and never
| saw one or found a kill and only once found tracks. Anecdata but
| I feel it supports the assertion that they just plain don't like
| to be around humans or spend too much time in the 'frontcountry'.
| Here in AZ, I find tracks regularly.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| there are exceptions, but typically, if you see a mountain
| lion, the mountain lion decided to let you see it.
| whartung wrote:
| I live in an urban area in So Cal near the foothills. Mind, this
| is not the San Gabriels, which is more chaparral, this is more
| high desert.
|
| We have some open fields nearby, but we're less than 5 miles from
| the actual hills themselves.
|
| Less than a month ago we had a bobcat "in" our backyard. By that,
| I mean we had her running along the top of our cinder block wall.
| What we actually saw was her litter of kittens. We just saw them
| running back and forth on the top, we did not see the mother. We
| saw her later in the afternoon as she came back to round them up.
|
| It was a tense few minutes as the mother waited on the ground for
| her kittens who were hesitant to drop down from the wall (it's a
| 6 foot wall). They were clinging to the neighbors gate. We were
| more worried they'd fall on the inside of the gate into their
| backyard. They're not home, and the gates are locked. It would
| have been interesting to see how she would have got them out of
| there.
|
| But all was well, they dropped on the outside of the gate, and
| they scurried off. A teachable moment for the children, no doubt.
|
| We've also had coyote's on this wall. There's something
| inherently creepy about being stared at by a wild animal.
|
| We have to assume that they live in one of the nearby fields.
| There's a nice 10 acre field that's overgrown with deep grass.
| Most of the fields have much less cover. But still curious what
| brought her and her kittens to our house.
| com2kid wrote:
| In the pacific northwest you can find bear families walking
| around cities and taking a swim in backyard pools.
|
| There is a local mountain called cougar mountain, during the
| mid 00s housing boom it underwent a lot of development and some
| of the new locals started complaining to their local government
| that there were, _gasp_ cougars living at cougar mountain and
| some residents even requested that the cougars be removed.
|
| From what I understand, such requests were promptly ignored.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I used to bicycle a lot before/during dawn hours to get in a
| workout before work and have seen mountain lions inside the
| city limits of Cupertino and Palo Alto. Both these cities have
| significant overlap with or contain nature preserves.
| danans wrote:
| > A Waghoba temple is seen at Sanjay Gandhi National Park in
| Mumbai, India, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. Tribals worship Waghoba,
| a deity in the form of leopards and tigers, in the belief that
| they protect them and their livestock from evil.
|
| It's always interesting to see concrete religious symbols
| developing as a result of human beings interactions with nature
| in this way.
|
| In many ways this doesn't seem so different from the ancient
| lions of Sumerian reliefs or the various creatures depicted at
| Gobleki Tepe (the oldest known religious structures).
|
| The sheer honesty of that concrete depiction of human survival
| plight in a natural environment gets reduced to a shadow of
| itself in most mainstream religion, whether now or in antiquity.
|
| Tangentially, this particular example of a deity fashioned after
| a dangerous wildcat is one reason why Hinduism is sometimes
| described as having thousands of gods. Many of them are just
| "functional", representing protection against or assistance of
| specific natural phenomenon, and have little to do with political
| identity or salvation.
|
| The Hindi inscription above the idol in the photo is even more
| interesting, translating as: "King of the Jungle, Waghobadev".
| "Waghobadev" itself translates to something like "tiger/leapord
| god".
| jeffrallen wrote:
| The mountain lion warning signs around Silicon Valley are really
| terrifying. I was always secretly rooting for them, seems useful
| to occasionally remind chewy humans they are not top of the food
| chain.
| fourstar wrote:
| It'd be great if they'd stop putting those huge tracking devices
| around these mountain lions' necks down in SoCal (and elsewhere).
| Also, not a fan of banding (UC Berkeley Falcons for example).
| Extremely traumatizing for the animal.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| > Extremely traumatizing for the animal.
|
| Do you have a citation for this?
| fourstar wrote:
| Lol. Knock yourself out:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=banding+day
|
| I believe they also stopped doing it at the Big Bear eagle
| nest.
|
| And for mountain lions: https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2022/feb/13/los-angeles-... no mate yet? Hmm wonder if
| it could be the huge and unnecessary device strapped around
| its neck.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Plenty of GPS-collared pumas have found mates. P22 in
| particular is isolated from potential mates by the freeways
| surrounding Griffith Park.
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journa
| l...
| googlryas wrote:
| So what you're saying is you don't have a source for this?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| No offence but you're not going to convince anyone by
| linking to a YouTube search, of all things.
|
| The Guardian link says absolutely nothing about the collar
| being traumatizing.
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