8 pumas photographiés ensemble par un piège photographique !

In December 2010, Brad Thomas, a Washington resident, set up a motion-activated camera to photograph the local wildlife along a trail on his property. Miraculously, a few of the images showed eight cougars all gathered together. Experts consider this behavior extremely rare -- it's almost unheard of for such a solitary and elusive species where individuals often roam hundreds of square miles and leave markers to purposely avoid each other. Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife's carnivore specialist Gary Koehler could only recall seeing this many cougars together once before in a photograph taken almost fifty years ago. Biologists are still trying to figure out why the cats came together. Some predict that because the species is so heavily hunted in Washington, territory boundaries are blurred (department estimates indicate the size of the population has been reduced by half during the past eight years). Others believe this could be a rare meeting of related cats with bordering habitats, specifically a mother and daughter, each with their own litters. The site was a popular dumping ground for dead cattle. Perhaps the younger mother lion remembered coming here when she was a kitten and thus returned with her own litter. Whatever the reason, Thomas says he was "tickled pink" to have captured such a rare and exciting photograph of cougars on his property. 3 images total.