the cougar in the santa ana mountain range, california

unerupted tooth suggested that the delayed
eruption was causing some bone disease.
Otherwise all the adult teeth were in good
condition and formed a functional shearing
apparatus.
Fl7's carcass was in good condition for
an exam, due to cool temperatures at her death.
She appeared in excellent condition with no
sign. of external injury and a thick layer of
subcutaneous fat. The only remarkable internal
finding was the presence of blood in her lungs
and bronchi. The intestinal tract lacked any
evidence of recent feeding; there was a small
amount oftarry black stool in the colon.
Intraspecific strife
Three cougar deaths were
unambiguously due to fights with other
cougars; 2 of these 3 carcasses were also
cannibalized. In a 4th case, a cougar was fed
upon by other cougars, but death may have
been due to other causes. A cougar-inflicted
injury and capture trauma contributed to a fifth
death. In all, about 16% ofdeaths were related
to intraspecific strife. In addition to these
cases, F 13 had multiple wounds on the right
side of her face and on her left shoulder at her
initial capture; these injuries had almost
certainly been inflicted by another cougar; the
injuries had completely healed by her death 6
months later.
This level of intraspecific aggression is
not unusual in cougars. Our observation that
16% of mortalities were cougar-related falls
,about midway between a rate of 3-5% in
populations that have high man-eaused
mortality (hunting and predator control)
(Anderson 1983:58, and Anderson et al.
1992:51) and a rate of 31% in a population
with very low man-eaused mortality (Sweanor
1990:36).
Two uncollared cubs of F3. During
intensive monitoring on the night on February 8
AC
1989, F3 traveled a short distance and spent
almost the entire night in 1 location before
moving to a more secluded location at dawn.
We expected to find that she had been feeding
on deer, but at the site where she had spent the
night we found the very fresh and partially
consumed carcass of F3's yearling daughter
(not radio-tagged). She was in very good
physical condition prior to death (abdominal fat
26mm). There was extensive subcutaneous
bleeding and muscle trauma on her forelimbs
and face, indicative of a prolonged fight using
her forelimbs for defense, and her neck was
broken between the skull and top vertebra. We
set snares on her carcass and captured a
yearling cougar, almost certainly her sibling,
the following night. The male cub had severe,
infected wounds from cougar bites to .his hind
quarters, and died during the capture operation.
Fat reserves and overall size in relation to age
indicated that the male yearling was also in
good physical condition before the attack. .
Steady night-time rainfall obliterated tracks in
the vicinity of the kill, and we could not
determine the identity of the cougar that killed
the female cub and injured the male. Perhaps
the 2 cubs injured each other in a fight, but we
speculate that an uncollared male was
responsible. Five months later, F1 was killed
(but not eaten) by a cougar less than 250m
from the same location.
Fl. F1 was killed by an uncollared
cougar on July 3 or 4 1989. Her carcass was
lying among some cattails adjacent to a creek
near the confluence with the small dry tributary
in which the 2 yearling offspring of F3 died in
February 1989. Her position indicated that she
had crawled there on her o\\n; the only wounds
were two conspicuous canine punctures, one
entering her skull downward above her right
eye (crushing the supraorbital arch) and the
other entering upward near the posterior margin
ofthe right mandible. Tooth size, distance, and
position indicate that this bite was delivered by
another cougar; the attacker did not feed on her.
Her stomach contained a freshly consumed