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01-20-04, 08:16 AM
This is just a bit of information I saw that may be of interest to people who have been discussing the mountain lion attacks on two mountain bikers in CA recently.
I saw this in the Monday 1/19/2003 paper and like many news releases, it was not horribly clear. Apparantly, researchers in CA have been doing a study on Mountain Lions. They have captured lions, put the good old radio collars on them and released them and then tracked them to see where the lions went. They have been following a 7 lions for about 3 years now down near San Diego. Apparantly, the researchers were amazed at how close and how often mountain lions moved to developed areas. The news release did not offer any details on just what was meant by "close". But I suspect that the lions probably move very close to people's back yards on a regular basis. Lions are nocturnal and they are quiet and good at taking cover to boot. I would think that lions can move in very close proximity to human habitations with people being none the wiser.
We have had a bit of speculation that the unfortunate lion attack on the mountain bikers was the result of human encroachment into lion habitat. I wonder if another dynamic is happening. If I were a mountain lion, a mountain bike trail would look a whole bunch like a game trail. Mountain lions often take posts next to game trails so they can ambush prey. Is it such a reach for the lion to see a person on what it thinks of as a game trail as potential prey?
What I am suggesting is that the above release suggests that lions often move close to human developments. But lions don't attack people mowing the lawns or coming out of supermarkets. The reason they don't is that the people are not acting like prey, at least not from the lion's point of view. I suppose when deer start shopping at Walmart then we can expect lion attacks in parking lots. A solitary person on a mountain bike trail may seem to much more readily fit the category of prey. I would submit that running trails through "wild areas" is a fairly recent thing and that joggers and mountain bikers probably fit a prey profile better then say hikers who I would think usually come in groups and are probably more alert. That is just my hypothesis.
I saw this in the Monday 1/19/2003 paper and like many news releases, it was not horribly clear. Apparantly, researchers in CA have been doing a study on Mountain Lions. They have captured lions, put the good old radio collars on them and released them and then tracked them to see where the lions went. They have been following a 7 lions for about 3 years now down near San Diego. Apparantly, the researchers were amazed at how close and how often mountain lions moved to developed areas. The news release did not offer any details on just what was meant by "close". But I suspect that the lions probably move very close to people's back yards on a regular basis. Lions are nocturnal and they are quiet and good at taking cover to boot. I would think that lions can move in very close proximity to human habitations with people being none the wiser.
We have had a bit of speculation that the unfortunate lion attack on the mountain bikers was the result of human encroachment into lion habitat. I wonder if another dynamic is happening. If I were a mountain lion, a mountain bike trail would look a whole bunch like a game trail. Mountain lions often take posts next to game trails so they can ambush prey. Is it such a reach for the lion to see a person on what it thinks of as a game trail as potential prey?
What I am suggesting is that the above release suggests that lions often move close to human developments. But lions don't attack people mowing the lawns or coming out of supermarkets. The reason they don't is that the people are not acting like prey, at least not from the lion's point of view. I suppose when deer start shopping at Walmart then we can expect lion attacks in parking lots. A solitary person on a mountain bike trail may seem to much more readily fit the category of prey. I would submit that running trails through "wild areas" is a fairly recent thing and that joggers and mountain bikers probably fit a prey profile better then say hikers who I would think usually come in groups and are probably more alert. That is just my hypothesis.