These cats can swim long distances and hop between islands more commonly that we thought, which has big implications for their conservation.
Mountain lions are not commonly thought of as animals that swim well—or are even capable of swimming long distances. But at least for one adventurous cat, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
A new study recorded a young male cougar paddling two-thirds of a mile from the mainland of Washington State to an uninhabited island in Puget Sound. The GPS-collared feline known as M161, or Nolan, took a winding path through the outskirts of Olympia, and along the coast, before taking to the sea.
That got researchers wondering how many islands might be habitable by mountain lions. If the animals can regularly swim this far, then they can likely inhabit more than half of the area’s 6,513 islands, scientists determined.
They also