This is North America's big cat.
Known as a mountain lion or a cougar.
They appear powerful...
COUGAR HISSES AND SNARLS
..intimidating...
COUGAR HISSES
..and deadly.
But incredibly, very little has been discovered about them...
..until now.
This film follows a year in the life
of two amazing mountain lion families nestled in the Rockies.
MAN: Going hot.
They are part of the most intense study ever carried out on
mountain lions in North America.
By sharing intimate moments in the secretive lives of these families
and their neighbours...
..scientists are finally revealing
the true nature of North America's big cat.
Mountain lions can be found
right across the western states of the USA.
Not that you'd know it.
They're wary, elusive creatures...
..ghostly figures on the landscape.
Which is why hard scientific evidence about their behaviour
is thin on the ground.
It's generally been assumed that mountain lions are solitary animals
and that the only interactions between adults
either result in mating or violence.
But now those assumptions are being challenged.
Just north of Jackson, Wyoming,
the scientists of Panthera's Teton Cougar Project
have been carrying out the most exhaustive study ever conducted
into mountain lions in the USA.
She's here.
There. If you kind of get onto this first shelf and go around that way.
Under the leadership of Mark Elbroch,
the team have been using the latest in GPS technology
to track mountain lions.
She's moved quite a bit, which is good,
so we should get in there and set some cameras. Sounds good.
And then record their behaviour on video cameras.
They're using 13 years of data and thousands of video clips
to re-write our understanding of mountain lion behaviour.
Oh, let's have a look at what this is.
They also hope to answer one burning question.
In our study area, the population of mountain lions
has dropped by about half in
the last seven to eight years.
And our goal has really been
to figure out why.
Like any big Hollywood film the project has its stars -
two, in fact.
The first is known as F61.
When I think of a successful mountain lion
she is the one I think of.
F61 is strong, she's physically able,
she's the most competent hunter.
She is really the epitome of a successful mountain lion.
F61 currently has two, one-year-old kittens.
A male...
..and a female, who is affectionately known as Frostbite.
They're almost as big as their mother,
but there's no doubt who's in charge.
SHE HISSES
Despite the kittens' size, they're still dependent on their mother.
It will be another six months before they will have learnt how to hunt
and all the skills they will need to survive on their own.
Their neighbour in the study area is the other star of the project.
F51.
Having filmed her for several years,
Mark has noticed her parenting style is quite different.
51 does not provide for her kittens as well as 61 does.
51 is a loose,
you might even say like a hippy mother,
just providing lots of love,
but not necessarily all the sustenance they need.
Thanks to "Easy-going" F51,
"Super Mum" F61, and other cats,
Mark has been granted an incredible insight into
the world of the mountain lion.
He's witnessed intimate moments of mountain lions playing...
..eating together...
..and caching their kills, covering them up to minimise
the chances of a scavenger stealing a free meal.
He's also been able to witness some truly unique moments in their lives.
In this video we caught something incredibly rare.
Note the carcass.
F61 and F51 are about to appear.
Don't blink.
F51 and 61.
And 61 wins and takes off.
It's just a very quick, lightning speed,
mountain lion speed you might say,
they fought over the carcass and 61 ran off with it.
Amidst the thousands of videos Mark has studied,
documenting dozens of interactions,
this video is one of just four in which there is any violence.
We've come to realise by doing this research
that physical contact is not the rule, it's the exception.
Mark has many videos that record non-violent interactions,
and the first footage Mark ever captured of a meeting
between two female mountain lions is a good example.
Here comes a nine-year-old resident female, and she comes round,
she turns, and here comes a six-year-old female.
She's doing mild hissing.
And in the beginning we thought,
"Gosh, all that hissing - it's the pre-runner to violence.
"It's super aggressive."
No, hissing seems pretty normal
now that we've seen it over and over and over again.
So, what happened next?
They spent two days together and this is what they did.
They shared a meal.
It blew me away.
Having now viewed thousands of videos,
Mark has concluded that most of the previously held assumptions about
mountain lions are wrong.
We're beginning to describe a species that has some sort of social system,
that is interacting with a frequency that challenges this idea that
they are solitary animals.
And it's just opening our eyes and completely turning everything
on its head on what we thought were the social lives of mountain lions.
"Easy-going" F51 has recently given birth to a new litter of kittens.
KITTENS SQUEAK
As this incredible footage reveals,
for the first five weeks of life the kittens remain in their den,
living off their mother's milk.
But their mother, F51, will still need to hunt during this period.
So, while she's several miles away,
Mark and his team slip in to assess the kittens' health.
MARK: Someone hold that one nice and tight.
We're good. Here we go.
I hear 'em. I hear kittens.
SQUEAKING
OK, we got one.
OK, little buddy. It's all right. There's our first kitten.
Oh, my goodness. Oh.
All right. Nicely done. Beautiful.
The team have limited time to work before F51 returns.
OK. Number two.
Oh, nice biting pretty hard.
All right. There we go.
Looks like a male to me.
Number three.
Holy mackerel, watch that back leg.
Here we go. Coming out.
Even at this early age the kittens have distinct personalities.
This guy's... He's a loose cannon.
Whoever's holding this bag, do not let go.
He is our most lively cat to date.
All right. We're good. Let's get some work done.
Each kitten is weighed...
This one is three and a half pounds. That is small.
..and sexed.
And we hold it like that, this is a female.
Then each one is fitted with a special expandable
kitten-sized radio collar.
This the part where you try not to get bit.
And then we go one ear at a time.
Like so.
Beautiful.
Only when the kittens are bigger will they be given a GPS version.
RADIO HISSES She is online.
Each kitten is allocated a study number and an ear tag.
The number of this female is going to be 99.
WOMAN: F99. Correct.
Monitoring kittens is a key part of the Cougar Project's work.
Tagged, collared. You checked the collar?
This is a critical age for kitten survivorship.
And many don't even make it to the first steps beyond the den.
But here we'll be able to track these four kittens
and see whether they survive to disperse on their own.
The kittens' chances of making it to adulthood are not good.
KITTEN HISSES
HOWLING
Wolves were recently reintroduced into this area of Wyoming.
Not only do they compete for available prey, like elk and deer,
but wolf packs will often chase a mountain lion off a kill.
Worse still, they will kill any kittens they come across.
Mountain lions are also threatened by humans.
They can legally be hunted at this time of year,
and being collared and clearly part of a scientific study
offers no protection.
Even the weather poses a threat.
This is a particularly harsh environment.
We get frigid temperatures, deep snow.
HOWLING
There's all these dominant predators here,
competitors with mountain lions that threaten youngsters.
So, it's incredibly hard for small kittens to survive.
But the arrival of winter,
with long periods of sub-zero temperatures, is not all bad news.
For the scientists it's also a time of opportunity.
This is capture season.
Fresh snow gives Mark and the team the best chance of tracking
and capturing adult mountain lions
so they can add them to the study group.
It's essential work if their research is to be successful.
This time last year we were monitoring 15 animals -
there was nine adults and six kittens.
Now as we enter this capture season we're down to six cats.
And that's because cats have been killed, cats have dispersed,
collars have malfunctioned.
And now we're trying to boost back up
to maintain our research for the next coming year.
The team have been joined by Boone Smith and his father Sam,
experienced mountain lion houndsmen.
We're off. We'll go get 'em.
Yeehaw.
Today the team are on the hunt for a particularly large cat
known as the "Crystal Male".
His nickname is a reference to a nearby creek,
and Mark has made several unsuccessful attempts
to capture him before.
All right. Let's catch this guy.
They got a track right there, man.
Dogs are winding it.
The "Crystal Male" is currently the only resident male in
the study area, so understanding how he interacts with
the females like F51 and F61 is crucial to Mark's research.
We've been following the cat for about a mile and a half.
He's come up here and then he's rolled.
Thrown himself to this side several times.
You can see the back of him, with all the fur sticking in the snow.
And then his footprints. We call these stand-up prints.
You can see that this has gone all crispy from the heat of the body.
He spent enough time here that he melted the snow,
and so when he stood up in it, it freezes those first few tracks.
And then he goes off and nice fresh tracks.
The tracks are so recent the team ready the hounds.
If they get close to a mountain lion
it will instinctively take refuge in a tree
allowing the scientists to catch up and hopefully capture it.
HOUNDS HOWL AND BARK
Right now they're on top of the rock line.
Depending on the chase, it may be minutes, or possibly hours,
before the team see the hounds again.
Say your lion, come right here.
See when he goes back. Think he goes back.
I don't know, Sam. Huh? No.
We got a long haul.
Having started at sun-up,
they finally reach the barking dogs late in the afternoon.
DOGS BARK
The dogs have successfully chased their quarry up a tree.
He's big!
But with sunset less than an hour away, Mark must work quickly.
It's so exciting.
It looks like we are going to catch the "Crystal Male,"
who has eluded us for two years. And he's a big boy.
Gorgeous, gorgeous, big boy.
And we tighten it.
The plan is to anaesthetise the cat using a dart gun.
Going hot.
You ready?
COUGAR GROWLS
Time? 3.45.
He's going to go down this time.
But the "Crystal Male" is not going to go easily.
He's jumping.
He's trying to come out, he's coming down the other side.
DOGS BARK AND HOWL
COUGAR GROWLS All right, no, no dogs!
Where's the bag?
I got him. I'm with you, go.
By the time Mark and the team catch up with the drugged cat,
night is falling.
OK, go ahead, Mark.
Here, I need your head lamp. Shine over here.
The "Crystal Male" is so big, the collar they have only just fits.
The collar's on.
So, I think when he relaxes,
it's going to be actually a pretty good fit.
There you go.
The cat is given its study number, M85.
Having checked his vital signs, the team retreat to minimise
disturbance as he comes round.
After a brief night's sleep,
the team are eager to see if the collar is working correctly.
We captured him right on the edge of this cliff
and he's moved up there and then down along the cliff,
and this is his usual travel route.
We've seen his sign all along here,
and he's going to just go back to his routine,
heading into the centre of his home range.
Super.
That will probably keep him
beyond the typical movements of hunters, so it's nice to see.
Capturing M85 was particularly exciting for our research project.
Our study area is quite vast,
I mean, it's over 2,000 square kilometres
and these males have VAST territories.
Four times, sometimes, the size of a female territory.
Overlaying M85's movements with data from F51, F61
and other females in the study area, will be a significant contribution
to the project's understanding of male-female mountain lion dynamics.
Large herds of wintering elk are the main food source for
mountain lions at this time of year.
"Easy-going" F51 must average between
three and four kills every month to feed her young family.
They face other pressures, too.
Night-time temperatures have plummeted to -25 degrees centigrade.
Several of the kittens have lost the tips of their ears
and tails to the extreme cold.
If these unusually low temperatures persist, Mark knows
the kittens may struggle to survive.
That's a kitten, isn't it?
Oh, my God. We've got a dead kitten.
Oh.
The radio collar clearly identifies the body
as one of F51's young kittens.
It was inevitable, but, yeah...
There are no signs of a predator nearby.
OK, got the family group coming out this way.
So, Mark examines the body to try and determine the cause of death.
Skull's intact.
I live mountain lions.
I track them, I watch videos of them,
I go to sleep at night and I dream about mountain lions.
It's such a privilege to be able to work with a species like this.
But when I come across the actual body of a dead mountain lion,
I almost go numb and the scientist takes over.
Observe, record, figure out what happened.
External wounds essentially non-existent.
I see absolutely no trauma, no signs.
But that night it'll hit me.
They're part of my world.
You know, I'm following their lives every day...
and then it's a loss.
So small.
It looks like the kitten may have died from exposure,
possibly after falling into a nearby stream.
The harsh conditions persist, keeping predators
and prey low down in the valleys.
So it's not surprising that F51's young family suffers another
death a few weeks later.
HOWLING
Her family were feeding on a carcass and a wolf pack came in
and chased them up the mountain and away.
And one kitten disappeared on the landscape.
There was no sign of that kitten ever again.
"Easy-going" F51 has now lost half of her original litter of four.
It'll be another year before her remaining six-month-old
kittens are able to fend for themselves.
It just goes to show how successful her neighbour,
"Super Mum" F61, has been.
She has managed to raise two kittens from a litter of three
almost to adulthood.
Frostbite and her brother are the mountain lion
equivalent of teenagers.
But like adolescents the world over,
they show little appreciation for their mother's efforts.
Her son, in particular, is trying to assert his dominance.
MOTHER COUGAR GROWLS
Soon these youngsters will leave to establish their own territories.
When they do, their mother may well look for a male to mate with
and have another litter.
The most likely candidate is M85, the "Crystal Male."
Since being collared, Mark has followed his movements closely.
A process that has given him a unique opportunity to witness
some extraordinary mountain lion behaviour.
This particular day I will remember forever.
It took us nearly two hours to locate where M85 was on this mountain
and I set up the scope, and we had this camera rolling,
and then this happened.
Something I never expected to see.
Here are three adult mountain lions moving on the landscape.
That is not antisocial, that is not solitary.
Three adult mountain lions -
two females sharing the male, if you will, like a resource, and then the
snow came in and made it impossible to track their movements,
but then when it cleared, we watched M85 mating with
another mountain lion ten feet away.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have predicted such
an encounter and as far as I know, this has never ever been documented.
One reason that M85 might be in such demand
is that he's one of the few males left in the study area.
M29, the father of F51's kittens, was shot recently by hunters,
which means breeding male mountain lions are in short supply.
However, M29's remaining offspring and their mother are thriving.
And if "Easy-going" F51 can shepherd them
successfully through the final weeks of winter,
their chances of continued survival will improve dramatically.
Now, with spring just around the corner, life should get easier.
But data from F51's collar reveals disturbing news.
That doesn't make any sense at all.
The e-mail is an alert.
"Mortality Data" means that F51's collar
hasn't moved at all for 18 hours.
It may just have fallen off, but what's concerning is that
the GPS data shows that F51 and M85 have crossed paths.
While Mark's research has shown that mountain lion fights are rare,
the signs are ominous.
Mark heads off to solve the mystery.
On his way, he scans the snow for clues.
Something's going up and down here I want to look at.
Here she is. Here they are running across.
Look at the size of M85's footprints.
Big. Right here.
The trail leads Mark towards the GPS point indicated by the collar.
This is it.
F51 and her family came down this chute.
And they must have been making noise,
kicking rocks or calling, kittens playing, who knows?
And M85 comes up right here, right off his kill,
and they engage for the first time right here.
And it's boom!
It's just covered in cat fur. These cats are actually fighting.
In ten years of studying mountain lions, I've seen this once before.
Fur everywhere. Look at them.
They've rolled over and they've gone down hill,
and there's the first sign blood.
You can see they've slid down the hill down here.
Let's just keep following it down.
Oh, my gosh. I think I can see something from here.
Ah.
This is exactly what you don't want to see.
Phew.
Oooh, it looks bad.
Unbelievable.
Ah.
Oh...
It's F51.
She's been killed by a bite to the head.
51.
How many times I've seen her in the wild, slipping around a corner.
This is a huge loss for us, a huge loss for the project.
Just going to remove the collar.
And so she started a wild mountain lion
and she'll end a wild mountain lion.
One question answered. We now know what happened to F51.
But now the next question is, what's happening with her kittens?
All right. Well...yeah.
Their future is bleak.
The tracks in the snow tell Mark what has happened,
but there seems to be no answer to the question, why?
Spinning through the project's video archive doesn't help either.
There are plenty of instances of males interacting with females,
but none result in violence, even if the female has kittens with her.
Every time we've seen a male approach a female outside courtship,
this is exactly what they do. They slink in.
Notice how low he's holding his body to the ground.
Notice how his ears are to the side and almost sagging.
They minimise their profile, they try to look smaller.
It is completely non-aggressive, non-threatening in every way.
He clearly just wants to share a meal
and you can see as he comes in, F61, there's no hissing,
there's nothing, she just watches.
She doesn't place herself in between her kitten and him,
and it's the kitten that does all the hissing.
There they are.
Massive resident adult male, feeding on the carcass,
three-month-old kitten and mother falling asleep in the background.
F51's orphaned kittens are now eight months old,
and can only be tracked with basic radio technology,
making it difficult to pin-point their location.
Since their mother's death, they haven't been seen.
Only the rhythmic heartbeat of the radio signal tells
the team that the kittens are still alive.
The primary challenge that these kittens face is starvation.
Research would suggest that they have absolutely no chance at survival.
That most kittens orphaned, less than one year old will die.
At least the spring thaw means F51's orphans won't freeze to death.
And, four weeks after losing their mother, they've reached
the spot where Mark will be able to get a good look at them.
FAINT CLICKING
You hear that? There they are.
I'll bet you they're down the river bottom and let's see
if we can have a look.
All right. Let me grab my pack.
Mark knows he has to tread carefully.
He could easily scare the kittens away.
Oh!
I've got one.
She's...She's eating this nasty, nasty elk carcass.
Well, that answers one question.
They've been surviving for a month on their own,
and this is the perfect time because all this food's appearing.
Look at that.
She's tearing into that old elk. Oh!
Incredible. Where is her sister?
Where is her sister?
I've got her.
She's just lying out there. Right in the open. Oh, beautiful!
Incredible. I can't believe we can see them.
They look great. They're healthy, they're stocky.
So great to see them feeding on carcasses,
but it's dangerous.
Everybody else feeds on carcasses too.
To be near something so smelly can draw in grizzly bears,
black bears, wolves.
If they're not careful, they could be food themselves.
If their mother had still been alive,
the kittens would have remained within a fairly defined range.
Without her influence, the orphans roam far
and wide to scavenge for food.
They're not the only cats on the move.
Springtime usually sees adolescent mountain lions
leaving their mother to establish their own territories.
It's often the biggest challenge they will ever face.
It's an uncertain time in the sense that they face unknown dangers.
They are navigating in between the territories
of established mountain lions.
They are trying to find a place where they have
other mountain lions nearby, so that they can socialise and mate,
and also have the resources in terms of prey
that can sustain them and their future families.
"Super Mum" F61's son has gone north, out of the study area,
but her daughter, Frostbite, has remained close to home.
So, I'm just going to pull up Frostbite's data.
It's really been fun to watch her sort of explore and try to disperse,
if you will, and then return to her mother a couple of times.
So here, for instance, we saw a little exploratory journey
out into the National Park
and then, finally, started moving south.
And, of course, she's following the natural terrain, just following the
mountains down and she follows them straight down to the town of Jackson.
She's been the perfect mountain lion,
in the sense that nobody knows that she's there.
Despite her proximity to town, Frostbite appears to be doing well.
This mule deer carcass may be evidence
of her first independent kill.
Remote cameras are set up.
Under the cover of darkness, Frostbite reveals herself.
She's doing super.
She's on her own, she's surviving, she's hunting,
she's establishing a territory.
She's doing everything we would hope that a disbursing mountain lion
would have the opportunity to do.
Frostbite has proved that she has the skills to survive on her own,
even in a noisy neighbourhood.
F51's orphaned kittens have yet to develop their survival skills.
Small prey like squirrels might supply them with enough to eat.
But that would depend on them catching one.
Mark's video archive offers an insight
into the challenges the nine-month-old orphans face.
This video is particularly difficult to watch.
F61 has maimed a fawn and left her kittens to figure it out.
And you can see these two kittens, which are 12 months old,
have no idea how to kill it.
They're batting it and trying to figure out
how to turn this into food.
This is important because it illustrates how in-equipped kittens
are to survive on their own even at one year old,
and how dependent upon their mothers they are even at this age.
Mark had not expected the kittens to survive longer than
a month on their own.
Somehow they have scraped by, scavenging from carcasses
they have found.
Both are smaller than they should be, but while one of them
looks alert, the other is lethargic,
clearly struggling.
Now, ten weeks after their mother's death,
Mark heads out to check on them again.
For one the struggle has proved too much.
Mark finds the corpse of the weaker kitten, F75.
I can only imagine that... she starved to death,
which is not surprising given that
the last time we saw her she looked bony.
Her hips were jutting out, you could see that she was significantly
slimmer, skinnier than her sister.
You know, we'll keep following F99 and hope for the best.
F99 is now the sole survivor of F51's final litter.
Holy mackerel.
Watch that back leg. There we go.
The number of this female is going to be 99.
F99. Correct.
F99's chances of continued survival will depend on her learning
to hunt on her own.
Scavenging food from old kills is inherently risky.
Carcasses attract all sorts of predators.
Even other scavengers are a threat.
Circling vultures indicate a carcass is nearby.
But these bald eagles aren't willing to share the spoils.
On this occasion, F99 is chased away, hungry but unhurt.
Surprisingly, over the next few weeks she appears to put on weight.
It's just a hunch,
but Mark and his team suspect she may have figured out how to hunt.
No sign of her, huh?
The only way to be sure is to fit her with a GPS collar and watch
for the telltale cluster of data points that could indicate a kill.
Gorgeous. That's what we want to eat.
So, they set a baited trap to lure her in.
Nice little treasure for her.
There she goes.
The lure works.
There.
OK, you ready? On three - one, two, three.
Once she's been anaesthetised, she's kept wet to stop her overheating.
Now Mark can fit her collar and check her health.
So, F99 looks way better than I expected.
She's thin, she's small,
she's essentially a stunted version of a mountain lion,
just barely half of what I expected her to weigh at this time.
16. 16. She's about...
36 pounds.
But she looks really well.
She's actually got, you know, musculature developing.
She's all right.
There's one development that is a particularly good sign.
Here her adult teeth have begun to come in.
They're not full-size yet,
but they're big enough to do some hunting.
Having confirmed that F99 is healthy
and has the weaponry to make a kill,
the team follow her movements closely over the next few days.
Almost immediately a suspicious cluster of points
draws Mark into the field.
Yes! She's killed something. Look at the fur!
It's the remains of a coyote pup, which the orphan has picked clean.
That's the tail. She even gave a good chew on that.
This is a big deal.
She killed something with teeth, something that could fight back.
This is a turning point. She might just make it
and survive the winter.
F99 has surprised us at every turn.
The fact that she learned to hunt on her own.
And survived in a landscape with predators and people
and all sorts of other dangers.
Throughout this entire year, she has persevered.
I remember one of the bits of video that we caught,
she's under this tree, in this vast meadow, and it's pouring rain.
And there she is, this tiny little mountain lion, alone.
And you just feel how alone she is and so...
it's warming to see when she's doing well.
F99 is not the only one at a turning point.
The scientists of the Teton Cougar Project are presenting
their findings to the wider scientific community.
This young female still lives locally and is doing quite well.
Mark's work is pretty amazing because he's using new
technology to really teach us new things about this keystone predator.
So many things that we haven't known about cougars that are
coming to light through this work. It's just astonishing.
A lot of the things that we're learning shows us
how highly social cougars are and the cougar to cougar interactions
are just extremely powerful.
The project's work is also solving the riddle behind the dramatic
drop in mountain lion numbers. There are two governing factors.
So, as wolves increased in the system,
all three age classes dropped in survivorship.
The reintroduction of wolves has had a dramatic effect
on a kitten's chances of making it to adult.
Only 20 kittens out of 100 survive until they're 18 months old,
and most of them are killed by other predators.
When it comes to adult mountain lions,
one factor accounts for a staggering 49% of all deaths in the study area.
GUNSHOT
Hunting.
The dual impacts of competition with the new wolves in a place
where you already had existing human harvest on mountain lions is
resulting in a decline in this population.
Mark's figures show that the only realistic way to stabilise
the mountain lion numbers is by dramatically reducing
the amount of hunting.
But striking a balance between the interests of conservationists
and hunters is likely to be difficult.
The agents that are responsible for managing hunting quotas
generates much of its income from the sale of hunting licences.
We've really worked to use
the best available information
to use decades
and centuries of expertise
and education in order to learn about the wildlife populations
that we're responsible to manage correctly.
It would be extremely controversial
if we got rid of hunting in the state of Wyoming or in other areas.
F99 is now a year and three months old,
which means she could legally be hunted.
But for the time being,
she's managed to avoid both hunters and wolves.
She's sitting now. I can really see her.
Front part of her looks good.
But I can tell she's finding it hard.
She's lost some weight in the last month.
She killed a porcupine recently
and I think I can make out a quill right here.
And that's concerning, because porcupine quills,
they have barbs in one direction and so the more you move your skin,
they go deeper and deeper and deeper, they naturally won't come out.
She's going to have to pull it out.
But...if any cat could survive, this is her.
I think she's going to make it.
Mark's hopes prove ill-founded.
Two weeks later,
F99 died from internal injuries caused by the porcupine's quills.
In contrast, F61's daughter, Frostbite,
has successfully established her territory, avoiding hunters
and predators, enduring freezing temperatures
and making enough kills to survive.
Thanks to her and all the mountain lions
that the Teton Cougar Project has followed over the years,
our understanding of these cats has been revolutionised.
Their long-term future, however, depends on how we apply this
new-found knowledge.
For Frostbite and the other mountain lions here,
life remains on the edge.