US Officials Declare Eastern Cougar Extinct

Jodie said:
I use the word cougar to mean a tan cat like a mountain lion or puma. I looked at the picture for the Florida Panther and it looked like a cougar to me. I'm assuming that's where it came from, that's what the SC DNR guy told my friend.
Click to expand...

That is believable but right now I have to classify the sighting as unconfirmed, I hope you understand. It is far more likely than western cougars however. There have been other unconfirmed reports from South Carolina however

http://www.foxcarolina.com/story/22304784/are-cougars-roaming-the-upstate

Edit: Try to get some scat with hair in it.
 
Last edited:
No, I don't mind you calling it unconfirmed. Yes, I saw that article and linked it earlier because it had a pic of the track that was found on the property.
 
Actually I would worry for the Florida Panther population if any of them go wandering that far, since there are so few of them. Western subspecies cats are able to wander that far.

Any of these spottings could possibly be escaped from pet owners since laws against owning big cats as pets don't always stop those determined to own them.
 
Arisia said:
Yep, physical evidence like scat/hair (I'd prefer that to a big cat carcass, of course), things that can stand up to independent scrutiny.
Click to expand...

If it is real Cougar scat / hair, I suspect that they can tell by DNA analysis what population it comes from as well.

An escape pet is something that has to be considered as well.
 
In order of likelihood for a claimed cougar sighting in coastal South Carolina:
Mistaken
Lying
Escaped pet
Dispersed western cougar
Dispersed Florida panther
 
The Shrike said:
In order of likelihood for a claimed cougar sighting in coastal South Carolina:
Mistaken
Lying
Escaped pet
Dispersed western cougar
Dispersed Florida panther
Click to expand...
Extinct Eastern Cougar?

Where do you place that on your list?
I would put it tied for last with Dispersed Florida Panther.
Those Florida cats can't even make it across Alligator Alley without getting crap-hammered by an Olds-88 or Buick Roadmaster

Or... is it one of the Western Cougars they released in Florida to bolster the population? Hmmm?
 
Last edited:
Drewbot said:
Extinct Eastern Cougar?
Where do you place that on your list?
I would put it tied for last with Dispersed Florida Panther.
Click to expand...
Me too. Either that, or after Florida panther.

Drewbot said:
Or... is it one of the Western Cougars they released in Florida to bolster the population? Hmmm?
Click to expand...
I haven't kept up with that effort. Do we know how many were brought in and where they are? I'm sure someone does.
 
http://www.panthersociety.org/faq.html
In 1994 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved plans to restore gene flow between the Florida Panther and Texas cougar populations. The panther and the cougar are both subspecies of the mountain lion. Panthers bred naturally with Texas Cougars where their ranges overlapped. This natural exchange of genetic material kept both subspecies of Puma healthy. Unfortunately, the panther population is now isolated in the southern tip of Florida. The program began in 1995 with the introduction of eight female Texas cougars into the panther population. The cougars have accomplished their goal of producing offspring with Florida Panthers and the program was completed in 2001. Genetic Restoration has restored historic gene flow, saving the Florida Panther from certain demise due to inbreeding.
Click to expand...
 
There will be a percentage of "Mistaken" which are actually "Lying". You can't put a number on that percentage because it would require getting inside the head of the claimant, or possibly learned by speaking to others in a multiple witness situation.
 
The more black panther/mountain lion/cougar sightings I hear (and I hear a ton locally) the less likely I think any of them are to be true.

That might seem counterintuitive, but the sheer amount of these alleged sightings combined with the complete lack of evidence of any kind to their reality, speaks more to it being a sociological phenomenon than a biological one, just as with bigfoot.

It's certainly possible to see a mountain lion in the southeast (besides those in florida), but Im convinced that the vast, vast majority of claimed sightings are simply lies or perpetuated urban legends, with a few mistakes thrown in. Just yesterday I had some folks trying to convince me that some large dog tracks were mountain lion tracks, and they would not be convinced otherwise even when showed why they belonged to a dog.

I don't see any reason to believe any claim about big cats outside of their native range that isn't accompanied with evidence.
 
When photographic evidence (pictures and videos) is presented it invariably shows an animal that is not a cougar, or sometimes cannot be identified at all. If cougars really did exist in the East we would have lots of photographic evidence that really does show cougars.

Nearly all of this photo evidence shows housecats, with some showing other animals such as dogs, coyotes and deer. I'm talking about visual evidence that is not an obvious hoax such as intentionally using photos taken from places where cougars really do live. This hoax is frequently done with trailcam pictures.
 
A couple years ago I was driving some trash to the local dump a couple miles away when I saw something black up the road a couple hundred yards or so. There was a small rise just before I reached that point and when I came over the rise, I saw just the butt end of whatever it was go off the road into the bushes, plus the carcass of a dead possum there in the road. Didn't think too much of it.

On my way back from the dump coming through the same area maybe 10 minutes later, I saw it again from a couple hundred yards and it looked some black animal eating the roadkill. I slowed down and kind of tried to creep up on it in the truck. I probably got 20 yards away from it before it bolted off again into the bushes. It looked pretty clearly to me like a jet black, average sized bobcat, middle of the day, eating a dead possum in the road.

When I got back to my office I grabbed a camera and tried to sneak back up there and get a photo of it. Never did see it again, I kicked around in the fence row on the side of the road and couldn't spook it out or see it anywhere.

So I go back to the office and start googling "black bobcat" "melanistic bobcat" and stuff like that. The only confirmed results I could find came from down in the everglades, and the melanistic bobcats were not jet black, but instead still mottled with darker spots on top of dark fur.

I have seen bobcats in the wild, and what I saw looked an awful lot like one. It crouched when it ran, there was no visible tail like you'd see on most domestic breeds. So what is my conclusion? That I saw some extremely rare, hereuntofor undocumented phase of bobcat in the middle of the day between some cattle pastures?

No. I think I saw a feral, large, tail-less domestic cat that apparently was subsisting to some extent on roadkilled possum, which I've never known them to do otherwise. Either that or I hallucinated the whole thing.
 
Maine Coon cats are also domestic cats that can be mistaken for bob cats due to their large size, sometimes up to 30 pounds, and they do come in black.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom