426
Women pinned cougar during 'hand-to-hand combat' to save friend trapped in its jaws
(www.nbcnews.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
426 points (97.5% liked)
News
23406 readers
4848 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If anything this proves his point even more.
27 fatalities out of 126 attacks is an insane death rate. I guarantee you it's much lower for bears, and maybe wolves too.
This would be because, like the posted stated, bears don't have the intention to kill you they just want you to leave. If they attack it's less likely you will die from it.
Cougars attack with the intent to kill you though, hence the higher death rates.
Yes it's rare, but the poster never said it was common.
What that kill rate indicates is that cougars don't attack unless they're pretty damn sure they can not only win, but not be very injured in the process. Because injury = starvation for them. The only other case they'd attack humans is they're really desperate, perhaps a female protecting her cubs, or all prey has been killed by fire, that kind of situation.
If a fully grown cougar gets the jump on you and you're alone, you will likely lose. But if you are paying attention, see them and let them know they've lost the element of surprise, and make it clear you're going to leave if they let you but fight if they attack, they probably won't.
Of course if you're hiking with your children or pets you should choose areas without known cougars, and keep them leashed close to you. Note: if you're snack-size, you should bring bear spray, or your neighbors' obnoxious kid who runs slower than you.
This was part of their point:
So you're saying that people have only seen a cougar behind them staring at them 126 times in the last 100 years?
As for what you're saying:
Please support that with evidence. Because if the kill rate is far less than 25%, which it is, they must be terrible at being hunters.
25% is a very high kill rate for natural predators.
https://www.explorationjunkie.com/lion-hunting-success-rate/
And that 15-25% rate is against their natural prey. 25% against a prey that is equal in size and not their natural prey is pretty darn good.
As for the first part of your post, you're right. Just because you see a cougar behind you doesn't mean it considers you food. I've always heard that the only time you EVER see a cougar is when it does NOT see you as food. If it doesn't want to be seen then it won't be seen. If you see it then it already considers you either non-food or a non-threat.