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Hunting Methods and Favored Prey: Though their favorite prey is deer, these opportunistic
predators can feed on a wide variety of animals from grasshoppers to elk.
If very hungry, they can even eat pet food or garbage. A healthy cougar,
however, is drawn to hunt for live prey. They kill larger prey by jumping
onto their backs and tackling them to the ground. Then they sink their teeth
into the necks and throats of their quarry, often strangling them to death.
(Adaptable in their methods, elk are downed by use of a claw in the snout to
wrench the neck down and break it.) They also rake the deer or elk with their
long claws to cripple it.
Number of Kills: A cougar will kill up to one deer, elk,
calf, bighorn sheep, or goat per week. In the 1990's about 200,000 deer per
year were killed by lions in California alone. They feed on their kill,
eating about 8 pounds of meat at a sitting, then make a cache by covering
the carcass. A female with cubs often will eat most of her kill,
returning to her cache until the meat begins to spoil, then she will kill
again. Males often eat little of their kill, wandering off in search
of a female to mate with instead.
Ecological Impacts: It is not uncommon for cougars to go into
a killing frenzy where many slaughtered animals are not eaten. It is widely
believed that these predators only kill for food, but this is disputed by
field observations. It is widely believed that cougars kill only the old and
the weak, pruning herds like a careful gardner. To the contrary, actual
studies demonstrate their preference for easy fawns. It is also widely
believed that cougars will attack
humans only under abnormal circumstances such as being cornered or diseased.
Though we are far from their favorite prey, the cougars that attack humans
are usually found to be normal animals exhibiting normal predator behavior.
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Hunting Methods and Favored Prey: Though their favorite prey is deer, these opportunistic
predators can feed on a wide variety of animals from grasshoppers to elk.
If very hungry, they can even eat pet food or garbage. A healthy cougar,
however, is drawn to hunt for live prey. They kill larger prey by jumping
onto their backs and tackling them to the ground. Then they sink their teeth
into the necks and throats of their quarry, often strangling them to death.
(Adaptable in their methods, elk are downed by use of a claw in the snout to
wrench the neck down and break it.) They also rake the deer or elk with their
long claws to cripple it.
