MOUNTAIN LION TALK

On Saturday, March 19, 2005, the Rancho Simi Trail Blazers and the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District hosted a presentation by Christa M. Mann, Field Representative, Mountain Lion Foundation. Her talk and power point presentation was entitled “Living with Mountain Lions.” Thirty-seven people were in attendance. Three things that I learned that I didn’t know are:

1. Mountain lion’s front feet are larger than their rear feet.

2. Most of the time they walk so their rear feet step onto the same places out of which their front feet just stepped. I had long puzzled why the big cat tracks I found didn’t seem to show more prints. I guess that I wasn’t bright enough to figure it out on my own. By the way, this habit allows mountain lions to make less noise – they can see where they are putting their front paws, but not where they are putting their rear paws.

3. When mountain lions mate, they will copulate 50-90 times a day for a seven to eight day period. The female screams during copulation. I have read about the screams of mountain lions. Each of my sources indicated that it was not known what was going on during the screaming. However, two of the sources said that people hearing the screams first described the sound as that of a woman, then as that of one or more people, and then eventually of that of an animal. Some years ago, while coming down the Chumash Trail, in the dark, on one of our Thursday evening hikes, I and everyone else on the hike were treated to the screams of a mountain lion. The screams came at regular intervals and seemed to persist until we were out of hearing range. Our reactions were just as described above – so I concluded that we were listening to a mountain lion. The following week, John Sabol was a few minutes late in catching up with the rest of the group. He explained the he was delayed while listening to the same sound coming from a point about a quarter of a mile further down the same canyon. It now seems that these two events may have been part of the same mating event of the same two mountain lions. A few months later, we heard the same sound during the daytime in lower La Jolla Canyon.

Our thanks to Ms. Mann and the Mountain Lion Foundation.

Mike Kuhn

3-22-05