Wildlife Studies - Cougar

Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 19:25:29 -0600 Subject: FEL-L: more cougar behavior studies

For the past 14 years, my husband and I have dedicated our entire 30 acre property to the behavior study and survival of the only verifiable population of native American Mountain Lions in the entire Ouachita Valley. We live in a land of cream and honey; wild places, big pine and oak trees and the privacy to express the most intimate of behaviors, unnoticed by others. This is a vast forested area that most certainly once, supported it ’s own wild population of mountain lions.

Our original residents, the first cougars to occupy the NOAH Arkansas captive habitat cougar behavior study group, were Mercury and Tara our bonded, breeding pair. They were sole residents of the study area, which at that time also included the neighboring absentee land owner’s 200 acres adjoining us, and the use of Big Fork Creek which borders our property. Eventually though, Mercury and Tara outgrew the safety of leash travels and our summer adventures swimming with mountain lions in Big Fork creek, and we instead resorted to construction of a fenced-in habitat connected to the main cage that Mercury and Tara called their home.

This first habitat was a tree covered hillside and it enclosed nearly ¼ acre. A year later we decided to construct a another larger habitat, encompassing nearly 6 acres of woods, meadows, hillside and a wet weather swamp. It was here that we performed most of our behavior studies. We have spent nearly 10 years documenting with video camera, the lives of our personal friends, Cinnabar, Arjan and Sharu, from the moment their were born, their entire childhood, and their personality development, which has resulted in a stable, compatible group of peripheral, non-breeding, sexually mature, male mountain lions.

After observing nearly a year of sexual cycles that involved long, drawn out foreplay and repeated copulations without conception, I began to theorize that cougars were induced ovulators, like the African lion, which I have read, has been observed to copulate more than 70 times a day, for days at a time. Supposedly, the female lion needs the repeated vaginal stimulation of sexual intercourse in order to finally release her eggs from her ovaries and become pregnant. Since this time though, I have documented this to be an entirely false statement as far as mountain lions are concerned, as Tara and the other female cougars who have since come to reside at our behavior research center, have successfully conceived after only as few as one or two matings.

The birth of Mercury and Tara’s first litter allowed an even more wondrous look into the world of cougars. We co-raised this litter with their cougar mother and we were able to walk with these four cats throughout Cougar Country, the 6 acre habitat I referred to earlier, and witness the love and tenderness, and curiosity and playfulness of a cougar family group. And we leashed Mercury up so that he could spend time in Cougar Country alone while Tara spent time in the adjoining cage with her male offspring. And when we brought Mercury over to Cougar Country we heard Tara vocalize a gurren to him through the common fence between them. It was the first time we had ever heard that particular cougar communication. A gurren is a short range vocalization denoting a friendly greeting or appeasement. Tara was doing her best to appease Mercury over the presence of his sons..

But when then these offspring were 8 months old, Tara’s hormone cycles dictated in her an intense desire to breed, and in her renewed sexually receptive state, she rejected forever, the company of her sons. Just like the cougars in the wild, natural control factors resulted in her aversion to the presence of related males when she was in heat.

In addition to the study of the stable breeding nucleus of cougars and their dispersing offspring, we branched out into the study of the effects of transient cougars on the dynamics of the stable core group. And so we took in our first pair of yearling displaced cougars. Max and Patches were placed in a new cage, constructed nearby to the core breeding pair, Mercury and Tara.

Max was an exceptional cat and he demonstrated how a cougar can successfully move into an already occupied territory and carefully forge a relationship of acceptance by all other members of the habitat. Max not only lived with Patches, he also managed to prove himself trustworthy enough to have unrestrained access to the entire 3 acres that makes up our personal yard space and he was given the ability and permission to enter our home at will. Bart dismantled the porch door latch and attached a loop of rope and Max learned to pull on the rope and help himself onto our porch and then he would stand up and lean against our front sliding glass door, sliding it open, and he would let himself in our home and if he so wished, he would lay beside me on my bed, passionately sucking my thumb and kneading and purrring. And as he developed into a sexually mature male, his relationship with me evolved from it's original form of mother/child, to that of a love sick teenager with a crush on me. I do believe that because he was raised as more of a "pet" his personality developed this aberant, unnatural behavior towards me.

Max also, though nearly a year younger than Tara’s sons, managed to slowly and carefully establish a friendship with those males so that after only about 8 months time, he had been accepted enough by them to be allowed the enter their territory and work out the pecking order and bonds of friendship. Eventually we referred to Tara’s offspring as The Three Musketeers and Max as Dartagion. Max trained his two bipedal servants to open the various cage doors on command, allowing him access to either his original cage and connecting 6,000 square foot mini-habitat to play with his original companion, the female cougar Patches, or to patrol our yard and home, or he would spend the night with Tara’s boys in either their 2,500 square foot cage or explore the natural world with them in Cougar Country, their 6 acre woods.

And if that isn’t enough, Max also knew how to play it right with Mercury, the alpha male and original resident of NOAH, as well as the lone breeding adult male in this behavior study. Max was respectful of Mercury and their relationship was cordial through the fence. And when Mercury was off sunning himself over the hillside of his exercise area, and Tara was in the main cage alone, Max would visit with her through the fence and do his best to win her attentions, especially when she was in heat. I do believe there was sexual energy exchanged between those two, but I never allowed them the access to fully express their secret passion for each other. And sadly, a cougar who’s personality was as exceptional as Max’s, passed off this Earth, without ever reproducing any living offspring.

But what this is all leading up to is Sammy. Because Sammy, another of our displaced, adult transient cougars, is the only other sexually mature male cougar that has been allowed to breed at our facility, and his behavior and personal breeding style, which is more of a casual sex approach to the whole affair, is in stark contrast to the love and passion and tenderness and gentleness expressed in the sexual games of a lifelong bonded, stable, mated pair like Mercury and Tara. Sammy has cohabited with four different females and his different and unique relationships with each of these females and the dynamics of the various breeding behaviors, offers another fascinating documentation of the effects of habitat crowding and the interaction of transient cougars introduced as adults, into a commonly preoccupied territory. Lynn Culver