Mountain Lions Are Spreading East — And Only One Thing Is Stopping Them
Wild Near You
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In 2011 a mountain lion was hit by a car forty minutes outside New York City. Its DNA came from South Dakota — fifteen hundred miles away, the longest journey ever recorded for a land mammal in North America. Hundreds of these cats have now been confirmed east of the Mississippi, in states that officially have none. And the only thing keeping them from taking the entire eastern United States back is one behavioral trait in one sex of the species. That wall has already cracked twice.
00:00 Hit by a car outside New York City
01:04 The DNA came back from South Dakota
02:55 How the East lost its cougars
04:55 The cats moved east again
06:37 Every confirmation east of the Mississippi
07:42 The one rule that stops all of it
08:44 Tennessee, 2015
13:42 120 cats in Missouri and no population
15:23 Florida, 2016: the photograph that mattered
19:53 What happens when the wall breaks
Wild Near You — the animals living closer to you than anyone admits.
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end of Ketchum, Idaho.
Mountain Lions Are Spreading East — And Only One Thing Is Stopping Them
Wild Near You
883 views
📍 Subscribe: @wildnearyou
In 2011 a mountain lion was hit by a car forty minutes outside New York City. Its DNA came from South Dakota — fifteen hundred miles away, the longest journey ever recorded for a land mammal in North America. Hundreds of these cats have now been confirmed east of the Mississippi, in states that officially have none. And the only thing keeping them from taking the entire eastern United States back is one behavioral trait in one sex of the species. That wall has already cracked twice.
00:00 Hit by a car outside New York City
01:04 The DNA came back from South Dakota
02:55 How the East lost its cougars
04:55 The cats moved east again
06:37 Every confirmation east of the Mississippi
07:42 The one rule that stops all of it
08:44 Tennessee, 2015
13:42 120 cats in Missouri and no population
15:23 Florida, 2016: the photograph that mattered
19:53 What happens when the wall breaks
Wild Near You — the animals living closer to you than anyone admits.