Cougar promiscuity may be all for the kids
Cougar mums choosing to mate with multiple mates could have their kittens' best interests at heart, new research suggests.
Cougar mums choosing to mate with multiple mates could have their kittens' best interests at heart, new research suggests.
Californian populations of the large American cat species, also known as a puma or mountain lion, were closely monitored in new research for the interactions and communications between male and female cougars.
One in seven females mated with more than one male, said Victoria University's Heiko Wittmer, a co-author of the study released last week in the PLOS ONE journal.
"In large carnivores infanticide does happen ... [A male] will kill [another male's] young because it gets the female into oestrus and he gets a mating opportunity.
"Multiple paternity is another way for the female to confuse males about who the father is."
Having offspring with different fathers, and therefore a mix of genes, also boosted the overall chances of her kittens surviving, he said.
The amorous encounters were caught on robotic video cameras placed at what are known as "communal scrapes", where multiple cats come to scent-mark and sniff out other males and females in the area.
"These areas ... we call them a billboard," he said.
"They are a solitary cat species, like most cats but not all. They live in a social structure where bigger males try to establish territories that encompass multiple females who live in smaller territories."
Recording over a two-year period from 2011, the researchers were able to get a better understanding of when both male and female cougars visited these scrapes and what they did while there, Wittmer said.
"Males are constantly using those community scrapes, constantly advertising, all through the year. Females are very selective in when they advertise, when they're in oestrus, but when they do they actually do it more frequently than the males," he said.
While males tended to scent mark at the scrape areas, the females caterwauled. "We think that is basically encouraging males, maybe from outside the territory, to come in and investigate."
Little was known about cougar communication before the study, and the information gathered was likely to help biologists trying to estimate population sizes of the cats, found in both North and South America.
"In cats that are that size and secretive, it is just very difficult to observe them."