yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Cameras Reveal the Secret Lives of a Mountain Lion Family | Short Film Showcase


3m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Mountain lion, puma, cougar— all names for an animal that has long been misunderstood, feared, hunted, and eliminated from most of its range. The cougar is often believed to be solitary and even heartless, but recently, deep in the Wyoming Wind River Range, biologists have placed motion cameras in dens and in other secluded areas. Through the camera's lens, we’re now able to peer into the secret life of these animals and see their close family ties and how truly social, interdependent, and caring they really are.

What has emerged is quite surprising even to the biologists. Meet female 61, a new mother. She’s given birth to three kittens: the quiet male M-72, another male M-80, a firecracker to match his name, and F-96, their feisty sister. Kittens like these depend on their mother until they’re nearly two years old. 61 will devote most of her life to nurturing and providing for her offspring, and that isn’t easy.

In order to feed them, she sometimes has to leave her three kittens alone for days at a time. When she finally returns from a hunt, she calls out and receives a warm greeting from her kittens. The kittens are still young when the cameras captured something astonishing. F-61 and M-80 are feeding together, and suddenly a large male emerges from the darkness. Males like this one are known to chase off kittens or even kill them, but after 20 minutes, the male settles in to share the meal with F-61 and her kittens.

Thanks to the tracking collars, we know that this is actually a family reunion. M-80 has just met his father for the first time. Soon, the harsh winter makes it especially difficult for this mother to protect her kittens. During a cold spell, temperatures plunge to 35 degrees below zero. Little F-96 loses the tops of her ears and tail, earning her the nickname “Frostbite.” Unfortunately, the family suffers from more than brutal cold.

In midwinter, a pack of hungry wolves arrives and attacks the cougar family. M-72, the shy male, does not survive. As the months pass, F-61 continues to care for her two remaining kittens, watching for danger and correcting their playful behavior when they get a little too rough. As the kittens grow, we’re able to see intimate glimpses into their close social bonds. We see long, lazy spells of napping, grooming, wrestling, playing tag, and for M-80, a refresher on table manners.

The camera catches another rare and unexpected moment when Frostbite appears to be coughing, and we are able to see her mother come in to comfort her. When M-80 reaches 18 months old, he leaves his mother and sister behind in search of a new home and eventually a mate. This is really a time for hope, a chance for all of F-61's maternal care to pay off.

But after eight months, 150 miles from his birthplace, his search comes to a tragic end. He is killed by a trophy hunter. The deaths of M-72 and M-80 remind us that it’s not easy being a cougar: habitat loss, trophy hunters, harsh winters, and wolves in the Wind River Range. Fewer than one in five kittens survive to raise a family—fewer than one in five.

The good news is that F-61, the Wind River mother, is a survivor. She is captured on camera once again, raising a new litter of kittens. She has even adopted an orphaned kitten—one of several adoptions that wildlife biologists have uncovered with this new research. Little Frostbite has too beaten the odds and should soon be raising her own kittens.

Will her kittens survive to have families of their own? Perhaps the cameras will tell us. It’s hard to imagine what these and other cougars go through in the wild, but what we can understand is family. The moments captured here have shown us the true nature and personalities of these American icons: their power, their beauty, and how affectionate and caring they really are.

With help from us, we can guarantee their safe and rightful place and ensure that these remarkable animals are around long into the future. [Music]

More Articles

View All
The Science of Cycling | StarTalk
There’s drafting– something we know about in NASCAR and other very fast races. But there’s also drafting in cycling. It’s crucial in cycling. In Tour de France– so somebody in front of you, you can get an advantage from that. You certainly can. The energy…
Designing the Costumes | Saints & Strangers
[Music] It’s always fun sitting on sets, watching everybody in costumes. CU of course, it’s the nearest thing to time travel you can kind of get, you know? Everyone disappears if the crews are in a certain way. You just look around, you see these people, …
It Started: Housing Prices Are Collapsing
What’s up guys? It’s Graham here. So, we’ve got some bad news for the housing market, and unfortunately, it’s expected to get a lot worse. That’s because a new report just found that nearly 10 percent of homes purchased in the last nine months are now ups…
Are US Military Bases and Embassies American Soil?
Military bases and embassies, contrary to popular opinion, don’t count as American soil; though, they’re close. The country hosting the base agrees that her laws don’t apply within the base, but the base is still on her land. That she owns. Because it’s h…
Touring a $44,000,000 Mansion in the Hollywood Hills
What’s of you guys? It’s Graham here. So I’m here with my colleague, Jason Oppenheim from Netflix’s hit show, Selling Sunset, and we’re on our way right now to see one of his forty million dollar listings up on the Sunset Strip here in Hollywood. It is, I…
Finding area of figure after transformation using determinant | Matrices | Khan Academy
We’re told to consider this matrix transformation. This is a matrix that you can use, it represents a transformation on the entire coordinate plane. Then they tell us that the transformation is performed on the following rectangle. So, this is the rectang…