![]() LaRue emphasizes she doesn't know what animal was photographed. "But when you're not shown a mountain lion, you're much more likely to get it wrong. "When you see a mountain lion, you know it," LaRue said. It's not anyone's fault."īeing a scientist, LaRue has actually broken down how well people can judge photos that generally look like cougars, via her weekly #CougarOrNot social media quiz. It's just hard to get the right mental picture to compare these two animals."Īs executive director of the Cougar Network, a nonprofit that tracks confirmed cougar sightings outside their predominant current range in the western U.S., LaRue receives daily reports and photographs of possible cougar sightings. "I've been fooled," said Michelle LaRue, a research associate at the University of Minnesota who has studied mountain lions since 2005. So you might think we could tell the two apart. That's about the difference between my 6-year-old boy and me. ![]() They point to white markings on the legs, possible tufts of fur on the face, and - most notably - no evidence of that long tail that can stretch up to 3 feet.īobcats rarely exceed 40 pounds cougars can top 175. There are few, if any, cougars at any given moment - although there's no question they do at least pass through Minnesota.Ī host of wildlife experts, from state agencies in Missouri and Nebraska to directors at the Cougar Network, looked at the pictures and think - they're not certain but they think - that the big, tawny cat in the tree looks like a bobcat. Because there are thousands of bobcats in the state - the DNR estimated 6,200 this fall. The probabilities are probably with bobcats.Īny large cat we see in Minnesota is probably a bobcat. Juxtaposing the images make a pretty compelling case. "To me it was pretty convincing to get the size difference," he said. The cat in the pictures was much smaller than a mountain lion would have been. Stark then climbed into the stand where the hunter had taken the pictures. Stark perched it in a tree close to where one of the big cats was photographed by a 16-year-old deer hunter. It's not something I've ever used before." I didn't really think about the cardboard cougar until I was just about on the road. "My initial thought was: Can we get some more information. "My point is always just to gather information," Stark said. Maybe there was a paw print, or scat of something else of scientific value. ![]() It looked like a cougar, but it also looked like a bobcat. "My point was not to challenge anybody," Stark said.Īt first glance at a photograph of one of the cats in a tree, he had been willing to accept the incident as a possible rare sighting of a pair of cougars - one worth spending some time to check out. He toted along a cardboard cutout of a typical mountain lion. 14, the potential cougar-fight site near the Iron Range town of Nashwauk. What were at first believed to be two cougars, or mountain lions, fighting after one tried to attack a deer last week was most likely a common case of mistaken identity, state wildlife officials have concluded.ĭan Stark, large carnivore specialist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, visited on Monday, Nov. NASHWAUK, Minn.-Turns out they might have been "just" bobcats. Left photo courtesy of Dan Stark, Minnesota DNR right photo courtesy of Jordan Bowen The photo on the right was initially believed to be of a cougar, but when a Minnesota wildlife official visited the site with the cardboard cutout site Monday, he concluded the animal was too small. A cardboard cutout of a typical-size cougar, or mountain lion, left, is compared with a photograph of an apparent bobcat in the same tree from the same vantage point in northern Minnesota.
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