Cougars killing grizzlies and black bears?

[Deleted]

According to some accounts on The Great Bear of Almanac, there are recorded accounts of cougars acctually killing grizzlies and black bears. Could someone post those accounts and how true are they?

[grrraaahhh]

Brown is citing old Native American (Indian) stories. I will answer (reply) more about this shortly.

[grrraaahhh]

Bear Mortality by Cougars

I think recent research show both black/grizzly bears to benefit from cougar production of animal matter. Honestly, I have a hard time believing old 19th century American West accounts of the larger grizzly and black bear fatality involving cougars (35-85 kg) who rarely exceed 200 lbs. After a strong search of the literature, the only piece of information I found was a percentage (%) occurrence of prey calculation by authors Kerry Murphy and Toni K. Ruth (see below reference) showing black bears in Montana/Wyoming to make up 1% of cougar diet. No additional victim profile information (e.g., cubs) is given. The authors do note that scat analysis of animal matter does not always mean predation explaining how cougars can also scavenge carrion.

IMO, one of the best, comprehensive cougar publications came out a few years ago: Hornocker, M., and S. Negri (Eds.). 2009. Cougar: ecology and conservation. University of Chicago Press. Chicago, IL.


The book has terrific data on cougar predatory/prey relations and cougar interference competition dynamics as it relates to bears covering both North & South America including black & grizzly bear relations and to some extent (if one interprets the absence of data as information) spectacle bear relations. On the latter, there were no spectacled bear signatures in South American cougar diet analysis.