This trail cam footage shows a mother cougar with three half-grown cubs visiting a stash of deer meat. And purring and squeaking. They look healthy and well-fed. But the surprise is where this happened. It was near Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota! We think of cougars as residents of the American West, but they once roamed the entire country. Over the last couple of decades, there have been sightings in Minnesota, mostly on trail cams, of solitary cougars, but this sighting is the first of cubs in Minnesota in more than a century.
When an electronically-tagged deer died in March, it was found covered in leaves, raising suspicions that a cougar may have killed it. Researchers planted cameras near the carcass, hoping that the cats would return to feast again. They were surprised to see four cougars return to the site, meaning that cougars are once again reproducing in Minnesota instead of just passing through. Read more about this discovery at MPR. -via Metafilter
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