There are numerous stories of man eating tigers, lions and leopards from India and Africa. Never heard of man eating mountain lions from Americas.
Why is it so? Anybody has some idea? Any difference in habitats? Human population density difference? Or no wounded mountain lions left out to be turned out as maneaters? (In other words better hunters in USA )
Saad
Posts: 271 | Location: Pakistan | Registered: 28 July 2001
I believe a woman was killed a few years ago in Los Angeles county by a mountain lion on her rural property.
If memory serves, there was a bit of a fuss as the lion was apparently protected in that area and authorities were not allowed, or were at least delayed, in the termination of the animal.
I'll try to find specifics of the case.
~Holmes
Posts: 1171 | Location: Wyoming, USA | Registered: 03 June 2000
Since there are no (other) primate prey in NA, the cats have not learned to hunt humans. Usually when one does attack an adult human it is a territorial/preservation response.
The bunny huggers would have us believe mountain lions never attack people, but the truth is it is simply very unusual.
Early settlers knew very well that you had to protect crawling infants from the cats.
There have been several people killed by mountain lions in Colorado over the last few years. There have also been several other people mauled. One of the problems is the suburbs expanding into their traditional range, especially deer winter range. Mountain lions are found every winter in Salt Lake City.
W had one just last year shot off a roof here in centeral MT. out here in the flat land. They think it followed the Marias river from the mountains. A lady went out of her house and heard this growling she turned to find a lion on the roof of her house. She went back in the house and called the Fish & Game and they came and took care of it. I believe they killed it because they had no way to get it with out danger to the officers. That was defenantly not a populated area X-Ring
------------------ Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition!
If your living like there is no HELL, you better be right!
As I recall, Corbett mentions that Indian burial practices might have had an influence in leopards becoming maneaters. In America the most similar animal to a leopard, and in fact stronger and larger (in Brazil they can attain the size of a lioness...), is the jaguar.
Over the years I have heard anecdotal (i.e. undocumented...) stories about jaguars that occasionally attack people in the jungles of Mexico, but these stories mainly describe opportunistic attacks by probably very hungry animals and not man-eating careers like Rudraprajag�s leopard. The jaguars have no predators in the jungle and love to eat monkeys, but not even this has made them attack men more often. I also suppose that the population density in Mexico near jungles is much less than in India.
I wonder if the behaviour of jaguars is similar in South America (Brazil in particular...).
I read this stuff but I just can't imagine a Mt. Lion killing a human..I have seen to many of them killed in a trap with a ball peen hammer, they are by nature very cowardly and meek..I suppose if one was rabid or perhaps starving to death then he might attack a man, but by nature they are very timid...A bobcat in a trap will jump in your face and shred you, a lion will make a false swipe and cower...I was raised in the most populated Lion area in the world today, the Big Bend Country of Texas South of Marathon, Tex..I know that not one single incident has ocurred there, ever...
I think perhaps the closing of hunting and a new generation of cats being raised without fear of humans could be the problem...just my guess.
I helped pick up a guy in Idaho Springs Co. a couple of years ago that had been killed by a lion and had a couple of steaks chewed off him. So it does happen. I am of of the same opinion as you about lions, but with human encroachment they are a frequent sight down that way.
I wonder if another factor in the development of the UP maneaters was the fact that they were not exterminated immediately after "dining outside the usual menu" as they would be here. From reading Corbett, it sounds like there was a lack of guns (& shooters) in some parts of India to go after them. One story in particular, I think in "Maneaters of Kumaon," was about an older crippled female tigress, that was disturbed by a woman cutting grass, and killed her. She subsequently developed quite a taste for people.
Todd
[This message has been edited by Todd Getzen (edited 01-11-2002).]
Posts: 1248 | Location: North Carolina | Registered: 14 April 2001
Actually, there are a number of cases of mt.lions having killed and eaten humans. The best known would be of the two women jogger/hikers in California that were killed and fed on(different times/different cats) some years back now. With all due respect Ray, I don't see anyone being stupid enough to use a ballpin hammer on a trapped cougar that still has the ability to fight back. They may be shy and retiring but just like any cornered wild animal that can't escape, they will hurt you. WHO would carry a ballpin hammer to a trap, who would risk it when a bullet is so much easier?
Ray's last comment about mountain lions loosing their fear of humans reminded me of a paper I read a few years ago. It was by a biologist who at the time was the director of the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. He had done his Ph.D. research on mountain lions. His opinion was that mountain lions had a basic fear of dogs from the Pleistocene when they were preyed upon by dire wolves. Today even a small dog that will bark can tree a mountain lion. The author felt that they associated man with dogs, and that as long as we hunted lions with dogs, they would retain that fear of humans. That is why they have had more attacks in California, where hunting has been banned. However, Colorado still has lots of mountain lion hunters, and has more than its share of attacks on humans. I think the biologist has an interesting, and probably valid, thesis. But like any complex question in the sciences, there are probably a number of factors. The influence of each factor alone is impossible to measure.
We had a girl jogger killed here a few years back by a mt lion up in Idaho Springs. The lion was older and not in good shape although the story stopped short of calling it a bona fide man, er girl, eater, instead saying the killing may have been triggered by instinct when the girl ran by.
One of those things that don't get talked about that much, but apparently mt. lions kill a lot more than what people realize. On occasion I have lunch with one of the gentlemen who has done most of the modern research of the Tsavo lions, and when the subject of mountain lions came up he stated that there have been something like 13 people killed by cats in the last 20 years in the area from California to Washington. I'll talk to him next week about it and get more details.
Leo,
I can tell you didn't grow up in the wilds! You would be amazed how well a ball pein hammer works! A lot of old guys I knew used it, either because it is easier, cheaper, or in the case of goats "You don't ruin the brains that way!" .... Ughhhh but hey you brought it up first! When you're trapping the fewer holes the better, which in country folk talk means more money...
Posts: 7776 | Location: Between 2 rivers, Middle USA | Registered: 19 August 2000
I can tell you didn't grow up in the wilds! You would be amazed how well a ball pein hammer works! A lot of old guys I knew used it, either because it is easier, cheaper, or in the case of goats "You don't ruin the brains that way!" .... Ughhhh but hey you brought it up first! When you're trapping the fewer holes the better, which in country folk talk means more money...[/B]
A few years ago I was living in S Texas, had a freind that hit a wild pig with his El Camino bumper. It didn't go down, and my freind decided that he wanted the pig, so he backed up with the car door open, grabbed the stunned pig and threw him in the back of the El Camino, parked, then jumped in the back with a ball peen hammer. I saw him about 10 min later, he was bloody from head to foot, pig blood, not his. That was a good eating pig!!! Sometimes you just make the best of it!!
------------------ Good Shooting!
Posts: 1944 | Location: Moses Lake, WA | Registered: 06 November 2001
I personally know of two incidents with lions in Nevada. In both cases they were females, and upon autopsies, neith had any food remains in their stomachs. One was killed by an archer while scouting for deer. The other was killed by me while scouting fo deer and looking for coyotes. (Spot and stalk, no call used.) I was walking up a canyon when I had the feeling I was being followed. When I turned to look, there was a lion about 25 yards out watching me. I threw a rock and hollered at it and it ran off. A few hundred yards up the trail I was on, I got that eerie feeling again. When I turned to look, the cat was there about 35 feet away. I shot it. I have no doubt in my mind that cat was stalking me. When Fish and Game did the autopsy, the stomach had absolutely no contents in it. We concluded that that lion had decided I was dinner. They had the same conclusion with the lion and the archer. Paul B.
Posts: 2814 | Location: Tucson AZ USA | Registered: 11 May 2001
You guys just proved my point. You only use a ballpeen hammer on "incapacitated" trapped animals(the hog) or something too small to hurt back. I wanna see pictures of you guys knocking a healthy trapped cougar in the head. Any trapper that knows what he is doing will bring along a .22 of some sort for things more difficult. I myself have killed numerous small animals by knocking them in the head with a hammer but they weren't wild and didn't know what was comming. Well o'k, the rabid skunk was wild. Oh, and the nubbin buck whitetail that I cut free from a barbed wire fence had his hip out of socket and was very fevorish when the convient loose fence post was applied to the head. You don't have to grow up in the wild to know the realities of life.
Actually, the only goats I've seen slaughtered were hung up by their hind feet and had their heads cut off off while still alive, this for a barbeque. The kid goat worked easy as his neck vertabrae didn't pose any resistance to the big knife(cut through throat first). But the nanny took a bit of effort and all the time she was gurgaling a close imitation to a scream and Lord did it stink! Nothing in this world stinks worse than fresh hot blood exposed to the air. If it had been me, I would have just taken a hammer to them or better yet a .22lr to the head as I don't like brains.
If the information on this site is accurate and I have no way of knowing some of our contributors might be surprised.I was either do a word search for Mountain Lion Attacks on people in the U.S. and Canada orWWW.tchester.org/sgm/list/lion_attacks.html
Posts: 610 | Location: MT | Registered: 01 December 2001
AHA! I smell someone trying to use common sense around here!
Anyway thanks gophershooter for pointing out to everyone the obvious way of doing this. However, that link is not in service right now, but this one is:
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