![]() A wolf pack made up of adults, subadults and pups had criss-crossed the area, leaving barely a patch of snow without their sign. The entire area preceding her position was a mosaic of wolf tracks and trails. We slogged up the mountain to investigate, the ground bare of snow adjacent the road, but as deep as our thigh in the high bowl where she lingered. Nevertheless, her location data indicated that she’d stopped and we suspected she’d made a kill. F109 was up high traversing steep, barren slopes, where we expected there was little game. ![]() We can’t tell you exactly what happened, but we can describe what we deciphered from the clues left behind in the snow. She was near impossible to catch in the first place. She has “crazy” eyes, and always wanders the most rugged, inhospitable terrain. All cougars are feral, of course, but there’s something unique about F109. She’s a particularly feral mountain lion, F109, an adult female with three three-month-old kittens. For the first time, a mountain lion we were tracking killed a wolf. But it was just last October that we finally documented the contrary. To date, we’ve documented five lions killed by wolves, all kittens, and all less than six months old while they were still relatively slow to climb and less than fully coordinated. Fish and Wildlife Service surveys estimated that there were about 10 wolves in our study area, and that number steadily increased to as high as 91 in 2010. Since the start of the project, wolves have trickled into the area, established territories and reproduced. The Teton Cougar Project operates in the Southern Yellowstone Ecosystem, and is one of very few long-term studies of mountain lions. Some dispute her claims and point out that wolves fight each other too, especially adjacent packs, and that they also attack the head skeptics believe a canine puncture in a wolf skull could be made by another wolf just as easily as a mountain lion. Liz Bradley, a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wolf biologist, reports that she has discovered five wolves killed by mountain lions in three years-all bearing the characteristic canine punctures in their skulls betraying the identity of the perpetrator. ![]() What is contentious is the idea that mountain lions might kill wolves. Toni Ruth, in which researchers discovered the remains of three mountain lions killed by wolves. Take for instance, the Hornocker Institute study of mountain lions in Northern Yellowstone led by Dr. Wolves are considered the dominant competitors in most interactions between the species. This suggests that where wolves are sympatric with cougars, wolves limit mountain lions. Thus, wolves and cougars inhabit and utilize different ecological niches, allowing them to spatially and temporally coexist nevertheless, in the absence of wolves, cougars utilize areas traditionally assumed to be the sole dominion of coursing wolves. Mountain lions are solitary, ambush predators that select prey opportunistically (i.e., of any health) in areas where slopes, trees, boulders, or other cover gives them an advantage. Wolves are coursing, social predators that operate in packs to select disadvantaged prey in open areas where they can test their prey’s condition. Posted by Mark Elbroch of Panthera in Cat Watch
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