Life History & Habits
- Mountain lions prefer dense cover or rocky, rugged terrain, generally in areas of low human habitation.
- They have no special home; they bed down in any rocky crevice, hollow tree or log, hole in a bank, or tall grass or underbrush that is convenient at the time.
- Like any cat, mountain lions spend a great deal of time taking catnaps in a warm sunny location.
- A mountain lion’s home range is typically 50 to 75 square miles for females and 90 to several hundred square miles for males. The size of this range depends upon food availability, season, suitable habitat and proximity to humans.
- Mountain lions are generally nocturnal and are active near dawn and dusk.
- Mountain lions feed on white-tailed deer and other medium-sized large mammals. On average, a typical adult kills and consumes about one deer per week.
- Mountain lions are ambush predators. They stalk their prey then make a short dash to knock the victim down.
- Contrary to popular belief, mountain lions do not use their claws to slash at the animal they are pursuing. Instead they use them as hooks, to hang onto their prey so that a killing bite can be delivered to the back of the neck or throat.
- A mountain lion’s canine teeth are spaced perfectly to straddle the vertebrae of a deer and puncture the spinal column.
- If the mountain lion is hungry, small prey may be entirely consumed at a single feeding. However, larger prey may last for several days. Mountain lions usually drag their kills to a hiding place, cover them over with leaves or other debris and return over several days to feed, consuming eight to ten pounds of meat per feeding.
- Often the liver, heart and lungs are consumed first, which the mountain lion obtains by opening the abdominal cavity and rolling out the stomach and intestines (which they do not prefer to eat).
- A mountain lion’s tongue is like sandpaper and is used to clean every scrap of meat from their kill’s bones and hide.
- Females usually breed at around three years of age. Gestation takes about 90 days, with the young being born in any month of the year.
- Females have litters of two to three kittens. Blind and 12 inches long at birth, they weigh about 1 pound. They are buff, spotted with black and have dark rings on their tails. Once they stop nursing, the female carries food to them until they accompany her at about 2 months of age.
- Kittens lose their spots gradually. They usually have disappeared by 18 months of age, when the young lions begin to leave home.
- Adult females often share territory with their female offspring. Adult males are territorial and may kill other males and kittens they encounter. This forces young males to leave these territories in search of unoccupied areas.
- Young, radio-collared males from other states have been reported to move up to 700 miles from their capture site.
- Mountain lions mark territory and communicate by leaving scent markers in the form of scrapes and spots where individuals have urinated or defecated. Scratching posts are rare to nonexistant and random. If found at all, they seem to serve little, if any, purpose in mountain lion communication.
- A few mountain lions have been documented to live for almost 20 years in the wild; most, however, do not reach their twelfth year.
