In the traditional impression, except for lions, other cats are solitary, even if they are "couples", they only live together briefly during the mating period. Once the female is pregnant, the male will leave without hesitation. However, more and more new research shows that these solitary cats are not as lonely as we think, and they also have complex social systems.
The cougar is a big cat living in the American continent. Scientists have found through long-term follow-up studies that cougars are very good at socializing and have their own social ways. In simple terms, it is a complex social system based on mutual benefit, manifested as food sharing.
Mark Elbrock, head of the cougar project of the Global Wild Cat Research Institute, and his team recorded many scenes of cougar interaction, among which the highest number of cougars participating in the interaction reached 9. Although males are less social than females. But in 4 of the 6 incidents of "partying" of three or more cougars, it was observed that a male cougar shared his prey with his mate, offspring, the opposite sex, and their offspring. On another occasion, a cougar couple shared their prey with a strange cougar.
Sharing food is commonplace for cougars, and they have even evolved a standard process for this. An infrared camera installed in Yellowstone Park in the United States captured such a picture. When a cougar breaks into another cougar's feeding situation, it tries to get close first and observes the attitude of the other cougar. If there is no obvious expulsion, it will boldly test further until it sits down and eats together. In the face of rash intruders, the "host" cougar did not drive away immediately, but observed each other, and finally acquiesced to its behavior and shared food with it.
In our impression, prey is very important to predators, and sometimes they even fight for the prey. Some animals hide their prey from other predators, but why are cougars so generous? The reason is very simple, because in their view, sharing food and relying on "dinners" can resolve unnecessary troubles.
Cougars are efficient hunters, tending to prey on larger prey such as ungulates such as sheep and deer. In particular, deer are the favorite of cougars, and the explosive growth of deer in North America has made deer resources very rich. In some states in the United States, residents in the suburbs are even explicitly advised not to plant some deer-like plants in their yards, in order to prevent deer from coming to feed, thus attracting ferocious cougars.
The size of the cougar is not particularly large, and most of them are 29-100 kilograms when they are adults. They can never eat a deer if they catch a deer. If an intruder arrives at the occasion of eating, there are two choices: one is to expel, and there is a greater probability of fighting; the other is to choose to share food and distribute the excess that cannot be eaten to the same kind. Cougars are smart, and most of the time they choose the latter. It is obviously much more cost-effective to settle a dispute with a meal in the American environment than to fight and get injured. Of the 118 cougar interactions, more than 70 of them took place in feeding situations, indicating that they were willing to do so.
