THOSE PLASTIC PREDATORS

Probably because our own lives change so quickly in comparison, it's our tendency to view the rest of nature as a static thing. Many will admit to no more than one period of change in the planet's history. A pair of events in last week's news, though, served to remind us how dynamic nature truly is. Evolutionary biologists can argue about how quickly morphological change occurs, but animal behavior changes constantly, and nowhere does it change more quickly than in the behaviorally complex predatory mammals.

On April 15, 7-year-old Shir Feldman was hiking with friends and family near Boulder, Colorado, when he was attacked by an 80-pound (small) female Mountain Lion (Felis=Puma concolor), some 30 yards from the parking lot. Feldman sustained a broken jaw and lacerations, minor injuries compared to those of the cat, which was killed by a Division of Wildlife officer the following day. Two days before that, 6-year-old Elora Petrasek was killed, and her mother and 2-year-old brother, Susan and Luke Cenkus were injured by a Black Bear (Ursus americanus) in Tennessee's Cherokee National Forest. Two male bears were trapped in the vicinity of the attack, and though it's likely that neither was the guilty party, both were euthanized.

These were the most recent of an escalating number of attacks on humans by large North American carnivores. The bear attack was the second recent fatality in eastern Tennessee. In 2000, a Black Bear killed 50-year old Glenda Bradley in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park—the first documented bear fatality in the Southeastern U.S. This coincidence has experts wondering if a behavioral shift is underway among Tennessee bears. As changing human attitudes replaced predator bounties with protective legislation, the large carnivore population in the lower 48 has become larger than in any time in the past century. Of course, the human population is also at an unprecedented high, so it's tempting to chalk the recent spate of attacks up to a redistribution of probability. Of the 12 recorded Black Bear fatalities in the lower 48, and the 45 fatalities in Canada and Alaska, the vast majority occurred where bears have little contact with Man, so habituation to humans can't be blamed—but that's exactly what's being blamed for the Mountain Lion attacks out west.
For several years, a number of experts warned of precisely the kind of incident that happened to Shir Feldman last week. David Baron's 2003 book, The Beast in the Garden was a response to the 1991 mauling death of 18-year old Scott Lancaster in Idaho Springs, Colorado. Barron agreed with biologists Michael Sanders and Jim Halfpenny, who believe that the behavior of Mountain Lions in Colorado's eastern Rockies is changing. The advancing urban/wildland interface and a growing population of Mountain Lions that are rarely threatened by humans add up to a dangerous mix, according to these men. The urban interface creates excellent deer habitat, which attracts the cats, who are losing their fear of man.

The behavior of large predators is indeed plastic. There are no records of North American Gray Wolves (Canis lupus) killing people, yet in Eurasia, a continent populated for 6,000 years by unarmed human shepherds, wolves are fairly aggressive. In the last half of the 20th century, 17 Europeans were killed by wolves. The small Indian subspecies C. l. pallipes is responsible for several human deaths each year.
Here in the Wasatch Mountains, Black Bears are rare. I've seen tracks just once, and when I was in high school an unfortunate bear was struck by a car about a mile from my house. Mountain Lion numbers, on the other hand, have always been healthy throughout most of Utah, and the species was always quite bold here. I can boast of far fewer Bobcat (Felis rufus) than Mountain Lion sightings, though the smaller, shyer cats are far more numerous. I've twice had Mountain Lions follow me, seemingly curious. I'm sure many of the reported “stalking”incidents that have fueled the fear in Colorado were nothing more than this kind of behavior. I'm told that the reverse was true in 20th century California: Bobcats were bold, Mountain Lions shy. British Columbia has the corner on aggressive cats, especially Vancouver Island, which holds more than its share of documented attacks. Mountain Lion behavior changes a lot geographically, and from one individual to the next. Sometimes, their behavior is just plain weird, like the Orange County, California cat that killed bicyclist Mark Reynolds in 2004, fed on and cached his body, then returned to the road and attacked a second cyclist, Anne Hjelle. The problem with trying to analyze predator attacks is not only that they vary so, but that they're still so bloody rare. With such paltry numbers, it's hard to make any meaningful generalizations, but let's give it a try, anyway. I doubt that fear of man is the only thing keeping predators from feeding regularly on us. I've noticed that certain birds, ibises (ibes?) for instance, are completely unattractive to falcons. Whatever it is about those birds, it's quite an asset, and a similar je ne sais quoi has probably been a bigger factor in our own species' survival than our brains and opposable thumbs combined. Another thing that the Cassandras fail to consider is the complete lack of evolutionary benefit to anthropophagy. Once a predator even nips a human, every effort is made to find and kill the animal. Once manifested, the behavior ends its days of reproductive success. I'll continue to roam the wilds of America without worry. If 80,000 automobile deaths every two years is an acceptable price for the benefits of that technology, a single death from large predators in the same period is a small price to pay for having them around—even if that death is yours.
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upper: CAUCASIAN LYNX (1994) watercolor 12" x 9"
center: SLOTH BEAR & INDIAN PIED HORNBILLS ( 1998) ink wash 19" x 12"
lower: GOSTOSO!--MANED WOLVES & 3-BANDED ARMADILLO (1997) acrylic 20" X 30"