Curiosity and the Cat

We all know what curiosity supposedly did to the cat, but maybe, a little more curiosity on our part would help cougars.

Usually, we don't think of cougars as living close to us, and most of the cougar encounters we hear about are negative ones (for example, a cougar attacking a person or a domestic animal). This has helped produce the perception that having cougars close by is a bad thing, leading to extermination efforts.

On the other hand, our perception of cougars might be different if we realized just how much they are around us, and all it would take is a little investigating. Fortunately, technology is making such investigations easier, and efforts like the Santa Cruz Puma Project (SCPP) are providing information about an animal we know surprisingly little about despite it sometimes being literally in our backyard. Watch some of the work by the SCPP in the video below:



For more information on the SCPP and to learn more cougars, click here.

We overlook a lot of opportunities to see how we connect with our environment, but we have the ability to make the most of those chances and further that relationship if we'd just take a closer look.