The Unmountain Lion

For 25 years, Connecticut residents have reported seeing mountain lions in Connecticut. Our of hundreds of sightings, only once could anyone prove they had actually seen one.

That happened in the middle of the night on June 11, when a car hit and killed a large, healthy-looking mountain lion trying to run across the Wilbur Cross Parkway near Exit 55 in Milford.

Mountain lions have been declared extinct by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The closest known groupings are in Missouri, South Dakota, and southern Florida. Why do so many people up here keep thinking they saw one?

They are seeing something. But large wild animals move too quickly to stand for a photograph. The animals move around at dawn and dusk. People have not located really good tracks or scat.

Despite the mystery, the sightings are consistent and slightly more frequent than Bigfoot. Just over a week ago, Waterford’s animal control officer, Robert Yuchniuk, received a report of a mountain lion sighting from “a credible person.”

A Connecticut website, http://ctmountainlion.org/, posts more claims of sightings. In recent weeks people reported they saw the large tan cats passing through Scotland, Salem, Willimantic, Cromwell, Glastonbury, and other towns.

 “I won’t tell you they did not see one,” said Rick Jacobson, director of the wildlife division of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. “I’ll tell you that the probability is small but that it’s possible that they saw one.”

Jacobson said that when he talks to people about what they saw, asking about coloration, size, and weight, “frequently over the course of the conversations, the callers come to their own conclusions that what they saw was probably something else.”

Jacobson said there is no way to know if all of the other claims of sightings are true. For all but that cougar killed in June on the Wilbur Cross, no evidence has emerged to prove what the other animals were.

The DEEP believes that the dead mountain lion was the same one spotted earlier that week in Greenwich. Officials have said it probably escaped or was released from someone in the exotic pet trade or who bought the animal. New York officials told Connecticut that all legally held mountain lions there were accounted for, according to Jacobson. Personal possession of wild cats in Connecticut is against the law, but it’s legal in New York. Of course, the cougar could have come from an underground illegal trade.

 “Try Googling 'mountain lions for sale,'” Jacobson said. “You get a lot of hits.”

A primer: Was it a mountain lion, coyote, or bobcat?

It seems cruel for exotic animal breeders to raise such a large, mobile, solitary creature as a mountain lion in Connecticut’s road-ridden landscape. Even so, letting one free can’t be foremost on their minds.

Let’s assume, then, for the purposes of this primer, that mountain lions are living here, in the back woods and fields. If they are, it would help if people could hone skills at identifying a large mammal in poor light.

History

These animals are considered extinct, so at best, they are extremely rare. Northeastern mountain lions, also called cougars, panthers, catamounts, and a few dozen other nicknames, left with the last glaciers. Then they returned as migrants from southern climes.

Most of them throughout North America are of a similar genetic pool unless imported. (Officials are testing the stomach contents of the dead Connecticut cougar to try to figure out if the food is from animals that did not come from North America.)

The most likely animal you could mistake for a mountain lion, I’d guess, is a coyote. A moving bobcat might also fool the eye at dusk.

Size and weight

Mountain lions are big: 80 to 180 pounds, 2 feet to 3 feet high at the shoulders, and 6 feet to 8 feet long from nose to tail tip. You could mistake a coyote — thousands of them live here — for a mountain lion. Coyotes are lighter and smaller, about 5 feet from tip to tail. Bobcats are the smallest, only as big as 40 pounds and up to 3 feet long, but their heads are very cat-like.

Color

The mountain lion is uniformly tan except for a black tip on its long tail and some black on its ears. Coyotes are tan but with can have black markings and shorter tails also with black tips. Coyotes carry their tails low. Bobcats are reddish brown with spots that might be faint and tails with rings and—yes—black tips. Mountain lion kittens could be mistaken for bobcats: They have camouflaging spots and rings around their tails.

At dusk doesn’t everything look brown?

Speed

Mountain lions can run 50 miles per hour and will travel far in one day. They are always moving, and solitary. Coyotes also run fast, up to 40 mph. Coyote families stake out territories but will travel far to establish new ones. Bobcats aren’t as fast but will travel several miles in a day looking for food.

Food

Mountain lions and coyotes will eat mammals. Either might take out a weak deer and cover up the carcass to provide a meal for days. Bobcats go for the smaller animals like woodchucks and squirrels but will eat a deer if they have to.           

More information

For Connecticut DEEP fact sheets on mammals (including coyotes and bobcats but not mountain lions) click here.

For information on mountain lions click here.