“This project took me from the deep woods of the rocky mountains to Vancouver Island to Cuyamaca State park in California in an attempt to better understand what would trigger a cougar to attack a human”.
Director Scott Renyard
Animal Behaviour – Cougar Re-enactments – Educational – Disturbing Scenes
Introduction
The cougar, Puma concolor, is the second largest cat in North America. It’s also known as the mountain lion, the puma, the catamount, or the panther. Cougars primarily prey on ungulates (68%) of the time. Cougar attacks on humans are extremely rare, yet they still happen. Between 1890 and 2004 there were 88 attacks in North America and 20 deaths. As the human population expands into cougar habitat the number of encounters have increased.
The average life expectancy in the wild for cougars is 8 to 10 years. Most deaths for cougars come from disease or disabilities. In Canada, there are only 4000 cougars left in the wild and 3500 of those live in British Columbia. There has been concern for some time that cougar populations are declining because of human encroachment on their habitat. And conflicts with humans usually result in the death of the cougar.
The Film
In Alberta, a mother cougar was killed crossing the Transcanada highway. Local game warden found the dead mother and discovered three cubs hanging around their deceased mother. They rescued the cubs and took them back to the Calgary zoo.
Three orphaned cougar cubs are rescued and raised in captivity in an attempt to release them back into the wild. Every effort is made to keep human contact to a minimum to try and prevent the cubs from imprinting on their human caregivers. This experiment is woven through reenactments of cougar attacks and theories about what might cause a cougar attack and whether the experiment is likely to fail.
The Colour White
Although not discussed in the film, director Scott Renyard, states: “I couldn’t help but notice a connection between the cougar attacks we covered in this film and the colour white. A man riding a white bike, a woman walking her white dog, and a child riding a white horse. It could all be a crazy coincidence, but years later when I saw a news report that a woman who was jogging in a white t-shirt was attacked. It gave me chills. I still don’t wear white when out in the bush fishing or hiking”. If we think about it, most cougar attacks come from young cougars that have just left the protection of their mother.
So, much of what they do to survive is raw instinct at this stage. They have limited hunting experience and likely saw their mother attack and kill a deer or two. And what do deer have? They often have a white tail or belly. So, I imagine these new hunters remember the colour white and when they see a human, or a dog with a human or anything that is white, is this enough to trigger the attack? It might be.