Cougar's interaction with bears and wolves.

[rock]

grizzly bear




cougar 

[OldGreenVulture]

Honesty this is a mismatch. The cougar is a powerful feline that can take down prey many times its weight but the grizzly bear is just too big. However, we can post threads and videos of interactions between the two animals. I changed the topic into cougar and grizzly or black bear interaction accounts.

[OldGreenVulture]

[OldGreenVulture]

[OldGreenVulture]

Grizzly Bears view cougars as "Feline Gravy Train"

"Cougars, however, generally give the bears a wide berth. Grizzlies have less competition with cougars than with other predators such as coyotes, wolves, and other bears. When a grizzly descends on a cougar feeding on its kill, the cougar usually gives way to the bear. When a cougar does stand its ground, the cougar will use its superior agility and its claws to harass the bear yet stay out of its reach until one of them gives up, usually the cat."

Though grizzlies likely kill few cougars, they may see the cats as a feline gravy train. Between 1990 and 1995, wildlife biologist Kerry Murphy and other HWI researchers monitored 113 cougar kills (mostly deer and elk) in Glacier and Yellowstone and discovered that bears (grizzlies and blacks) were claiming a significant share of the spoils. Bruins visited about one of every four cougar kills, robbing the feline owner of as much as 26 percent of its food requirement, sometimes for several days running. "It appears," says Murphy, "that competition for kills creates significant gains for bears and significant losses for cougars."

"Grizzly and Black bear visited 24% of cougar kills in GNP and YNP and displaced cougars from their kill 10% of carcasses. Bears gained up to 113% and cougars lost 26 % of their respective daily requirements from these encounters. Bear predation and incomplete consumption of carcasses (especially salmon) provide food for a variety of scavengers."

COSEWIC: Assessment and Update Status Report of the Grizzly Bear Ursus arctos in Canada

dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection/CW69-14-166-2002E.pdf

[OldGreenVulture]

[OldGreenVulture]

Guys feel free to post accounts and videos here.

[Eaglehawk]

A Cougar (female) has been recorded killing a female Black bear:


So…why don’t mountain lions defend their kills from bears? On occasion, they do. In one case in California, a large female mountain lion was displaced by an average-sized female black bear from a deer kill. The lion abandoned the site for 24 hours, but then looped back to confront the bear. What we found when we visited the kill a week later were the remains of the deer and bear, side by side. But our research has shown that this is the rare encounter. Typically mountain lions hear the approach of the bear, and don’t even stick around to spit and hiss. They just leave. Perhaps the risks of injury in a fight outweigh the loss of a meal.

blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/11/01/mountain-lions-versus-black-bears/

Grizzly Bears are too large for Cougars,

[rock]

here is a account of a grizzly bear killing a cougar

www.tapatalk.com/groups/animalsversesanimals/grizzly-bear-kills-cougar-account-t4380.html

[OldGreenVulture]

This is not a match up debate thread. However, posting of accounts as well as mature discussions are encouraged.

[OldGreenVulture]

Credited to Warsaw.

[OldGreenVulture]

I edited the thread topic to cougar interaction with bears and wolves.

[OldGreenVulture]

Cougar kills wolf.

[OldGreenVulture]

Bears by Richard Perry:

In ( North ) America a few black bears are killed by pumas. Although averaging not much more than one hundred fifty pounds in weight, a puma is such an agile carnivore that it can compete on equal terms with the much more massive jaguar; but one would not expect it to threaten a grizzly weighing up to nine times its own weight, and accounts by the old mountain hunters of the American West indicate that most pumas, though bristling and growling, would edge off the trail and give the disinterested grizzly the right of way. Similarly, when feeding on its kill, a puma, though snarling and spitting in the most threatening manner and holding its place until a grizzly was within a few feet, would ultimately surrender the kill. It would strike at the bear as it dashed off, but the latter would not even bother to take notice of its going.
Nevertheless, an occasional grizzly is shot with long, deep scars on its back; and the fact that a medium-sized one may s ometimes be killed by a puma is indicated by the account of an Army officer hunting with two Apaches on the Pecos during the last century. According to Seton, they had tracked a large puma to a canyon, where their attention was attracted by a fearful din:

A middle-sized brown bear was standing on his hind-legs with his back against a big rock and was yelling bloody murder. The lion was crouched on the ground about twelve or fifteen feet from the bear. They waited there quite a while, the lion in the position of a cat about to spring, working his tail, with his ears laid back and getting ready for a jump as he moved his feet back and forward, as you will see a tomcat do. Once in a while he would growl. At last the lion charged the bear and grabbed him, and they both went down together and the dust flew up so that it almost hid the two fighters. In a little while the lion suddenly let go and sprang back to where he had been before. Both animals were bleeding and each was licking its wounds. The bear kept up his moaning and screaming and would have been mighty glad to get away, but he did not dare to expose his back to the lion. At last the lion charged the bear again, and this time with his claws he tore open the bear's back, and his claws must have reached some deadly part, for the bear fell over dead and the lion went off to his old place and began to lick his wounds again. After a while he took hold of the bear's carcass, and began to drag it down the hill and cover it up with leaves and brush.

*A middle-sized brown bear = an adolescent grizzly bear.

domainofthebears.proboards.com/thread/529/cougar-bear?page=6

Credited to Brobear.

[OldGreenVulture]

The Bear Almanac - Second Edition:

Mountain lion - Grizzly bears steal from mountain lions, but each has a healthy respect for the other. Enos Mills wrote in The Grizzly, "Bears and lions are not neighborly, and at best each ignores the other; but one bear I knew followed a lion for weeks... profiting by food-supply- the excessive killing of the lion.

domainofthebears.proboards.com/thread/529/cougar-bear?page=6