The cat dialed back pressure through its crushing jaws, and the friend was able to pull away, fellow cyclists said in an interview one month after the incident east of Seattle.
A group of Seattle-area cyclists who helped one of their own escape the jaws of a cougar recounted their story this weekend, saying they fought the cat and pinned it down.
The woman who was attacked, Keri Bergere, sustained neck and face injuries and was treated at a hospital and released following the Feb. 17 incident on a trail northeast of Fall City, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a statement.
Bergere said she spent five days at an area hospital and was still recovering.
Fish and Wildlife Lt. Erik Olson called the actions of her fellow cyclists “heroic” in the statement. But the extent of the cyclists’ battle with the 75-pound cat wasn’t immediately clear then.
If a wild animal attacks a human, we typically kill it, if for no other reason than to keep it from doing so again. We also need to know what caused it to do so, like if it had an infection that made it particularly aggressive or something.
We’re animals too, and vastly more dangerous. It’s silly to think we won’t defend ourselves.
Cougars are known to attack anything. They’re literally top of the food chain. They already had it pinned, all they had to do was sedate it, and cage it, check it out at a vet and then release it. We need predators big time in NA, there is a reason the deer population has gone chaotic and they now have tons of diseases. There was 0 need to euthanize this animal.
That’s not how predators work. Predators are extremely vulnerable to starvation due to injury. If a predator attacks a creature that’s too large or strong it has a chance to be injured during the kill. This then reduces it’s ability to hunt which could directly lead to starvation.
Predators rarely attack creatures they aren’t familiar with or are close in size to them for this reason. There are some exceptions here with pack predators like wolves and hyenas but solo hunters like pumas won’t usually attack a human. Humans are not pumas regular prey and they are far too big to safely dispatch. There are also exceptions as noted above for illness or desperation.
For instance: Grizzly Man died due to a bear attacking him that was more aggressive due to food scarcity:
Or they do it because you’re in their territory or protecting their young. Cougar attacks are not some super rare thing, there is a reason they have warnings all over the place. The more we are in their land, the more we start looking like meals as well.
It literally just tried to kill a person on a bike trail. Being known to attack anything isn’t a reason for us not to defend ourselves.
I’m aware we need predators, but we also need to not get ambushed by big cats. It might be too of the food chain, but we’re higher.
Next time it might attack someone who can’t fight it off, like a child or a smaller group.
A cougar is not worth a human life, no matter how good they are for deer conservation.
Interesting question arises from that - is a cougars life worth humans not venturing freely in forests (basically ‘the sacrifice of not being able to use that bike trail’, intentionally, for the good of the wildlife)?
And attacking a group of not that slow humans sounds a bit like distress. I don’t know anything about that situation, don’t claim to, just saying that disease and perhaps demeanour aren’t the only two things that can result in an attack like that - an attack which does sound like an attack-to-kill-for-food situation (the part where it didn’t let go of the face for 15 minutes) and not just for the sake of attack.
I think this is an excellent question to put out loud. I’m sorry someone downvoted you but it really is worth asking and thinking about. To be clear I am not saying that I think the answer is “yes.” But this sort of thing isn’t without precedent.
Story time: I used to be a very avid cave explorer and I enjoyed it more than just about anything. Caving is a tough sport to do though because many caves are on private property and the landowners often refuse access. So a lot of caving is done on national forest/park land. Around 2006, an invasive species of fungus arrived in the USA from Europe. This fungus infected multiple species of bats with a high mortality rate but didn’t affect humans (White Nose Syndrome is the disease name). Over the next few years the spread of disease was well documented, predominantly along the known migratory routes of the affected species.
In reaction, the National Parks and National Forest managers started closing off access to caves on public land, as a ‘precaution.’ Caving as a sport essentially became nearly impossible for most people overnight. This isn’t a mainstream, popular activity like mountain biking so nobody outside of cavers gave a shit and there wasn’t much of an uproar and the policy stood. The national park where I spent most of my time still has all caves closed to recreational caving.
So the people who manage these public lands absolutely do ask the question of when animal lives outweigh human use and I think that publicly asking those questions is a good way to make sure we don’t have the decision made for us without having a chance to weigh in.
I really miss caving. /rant
Yes, that is an even better case for what I meant (also sorry about the situation - I try to comfort myself that some professionals will go film & document stuff like that so that millions of us can enjoy it somewhat but without additional damaging effects).
At some point we just get to the tipping point. And Im also not saying that the answer is yes (rather ‘it’s complicated and highly nuanced’). Like, if there were only 10 mountain lions left in the world Im sure a poll would show ppl would want to save the cat & restrict human movement. The other way around too, if human population fell to a few million or whatever, the perception of individuals “value” would def change.
I want to encourage (I always try to do this) everyone to think about how hard would be to determine that line even if we had all the data, knowledge, & perspective on the matter. And ofc we dont.
Living without or with progressively less & less biodiversity, unique habitats, etc is something we are already doing for future generations. And how do you explain to alpha or beta gen that people in the past wanted to go hiking in the woods unprotected so for that convenience & 0 risk tolerance no large predators exist anymore.
Since my grandparents were born humans went from like 1.7 billion to 8 billion people atm. We need to accept we can’t live beyond our means for long and that immediate effects of our actions are not all of the effects our actions have. Literally not all of us can go bike on that mountain trail. And it’s a luxury.
Mountain lions while not endangered are considered near threatened. So it’s not like they’re deer, but conservation is still needed to protect them. Hell for the longest time they hadn’t been seen in the Southeast. It’s only recently that they’re making a come back, and a lot of that is from massive conservation efforts.
You’re absolutely right though, do we end up telling the next generations that we pushed further into their territory and killed most of them, because we wanted to be safe from danger while out on a day hike… unfortunately people in this thread seem to say the answer is yes, that’s exactly what they’re ok with.
True.
Im sad when this* happens where there are other options or minor adjustments that would go a long way. Bear attacked some sheep? Politics decides there are obviously too many bears in “the area” (0 experts said that, the exact opposite in fact), not the village expanding into the woods. Spend the extra expense to build a proper fence around the sheep? Don’t be silly. Research how to be safe from mountain lion attack (neck guards, pepper spray, maybe a horn/whistle) & cohabit the area? That’s nerd talk.
*killing the predator, “removing the problem” (from ‘the problems’ ancestral home) instead of (re)searching for a solution
Also, I imagine (I was never in a situation like that), while unimaginably angry at that particular feline individual, I would be mortified hearing that gunshot (after it was clear “who won”), def would blame myself for the rest of my life.
It’s like people that go mountain hiking in flip-flops and/or just a shirt & then have to be rescued by helicopter(s, plural if they are in a grup or there are several injured). Happens all the time around here. The analogous response in this case would be to get rid of the mountain, or lower it, or pave it, etc - but since those options are not as easy as shooting a gun (& I guess there is no hunt enjoyment?) we spend money to educate people, give fines to people that need rescuing because of unpreparedness, etc.
And ‘paving over a mountain’ would get rid of the mountain (the point of going there), much like getting rid of wildlife would do to the woods. If not for the education & cultural significance, we might try to get rid of the bees too, for our safety (but not actually ‘our’, just the current gen in charge).
Glad that someone sees it, a bunch of people in this thread sure as hell don’t.
Also a caver who was effected by the policy, and while I miss the hell out of spelunking, I love bats more. I have 2 small caves on my farm and have never been in them for that reason alone, also have multiple bat boxes I’ve built for them as well. My need to cave outweighs the need for these creatures to exist.
I totally hear you and respect your decision. That said I think very few of these decisions are as binary as it seems when presented by authorities:
I’m not saying there shouldn’t have been a total ban on that. You’re absolutely right, they should have allowed exceptions. This was also an underhanded law to stop idiots from going into caves and completely trashing them too. You can still get in a lot of caves with owner permission and being part of a club that is known to the state. It’s no longer the go into a cave at any time and do whatever you want anymore though.
In general, we advise people not to go to places where it might upset or endanger animals or risk an encounter than might cause the animal to need to be killed.
If and when humans go there anyway, we still prioritize human life over the animal.
It just doesn’t track to say “if you go into the woods, we’ll let you get eaten by cougars”.
This woman didn’t deserve to die for riding a bike in a nature trail.
The animals motivation for the attack is only relevant for conservation efforts. Is there a disease we need to be aware of? A behavior shift, or a famine?
For the purposes of protecting people, we can’t let an animal that has actively attacked survive, but depending on why it attacked we might be able to intervene to prevent other attacks and help other animals.
Oh, yeah, I understand that, I was thinking more like prohibition, for conservation.
Yeah, totally justifiable to restrict people’s movements, give them stuff fines or even jail time for conservation.
If push comes to shove though, the person’s life takes priority over the animals.
I personally wish it wasn’t that way.
Agree to disagree. I can name half a dozen off the top of my head worth a fraction of a cougar’s life and their removal from this timeline’d immediately improve humanity on a global scale.
Yes, let’s just kill everything because we want to take the land for ourselves. Being way the fuck up in Mt Lion territory is risky, you shouldn’t be bringing a 6 year old out there anyways.
Yes, killing an animal because it attacked a human is exactly the same as killing everything to clear the land.
You can look up where the attack happened. It happened on a marked trail outside a city, about 30 miles from Seattle. Not exactly the middle of nowhere.
Or are you saying that you shouldn’t take children outside of major metropolitan areas in the Pacific Northwest?
30 miles from a city can go from suburbs to wilderness quickly out there. And yes killing a near threatened species because you want to go hiking in a safety bubble is exactly what you’re advocating.
No, killing a specific animal that attacked a human is what I’m fine with.
Don’t be an asshole and tell people what they believe without having the decency to even get it right.
Again, the more we encroach into their territory (which we already heavily have) the more the attacks will increase…so yes you are fine with killing them so you can feel safe while taking a day hike. The problem here is you’re not able to understand what you are saying, you’re only able to think to step 1 of the process and not actually look at the long term of it.
No, the problem here is that you’re unable to not argue against what you want to argue against, even when that’s not what’s being said.
Guess what dumbass? You can be fine with saying we shouldn’t encroach on their territory, and should scale back how much humans are actively in wild spaces for conservation reasons, and also think that animals that attack humans pose a threat and are justifiably killed.
No matter how hard you try to make responsive killing the same as preemptive killing, they’re different and you just sound deluded.
You greatly underestimate the risks of sedating a dangerous animal, both to human and to the animal. Ask a vet or wildlife officer. It’s not like the movies. Also if they are checking for certain brain diseases, there is simply no way to test an animal and keep it alive.
Lol no I don’t, I’m not some city dweller like the mass majority on lemmy. I’ve dealt with large cats and predators. They had this thing pinned down, and euthanized it right there vs shooting it after they let it up. Sedation wouldn’t have been an issue.
Totally. I always carry a syringe of ketamine when I go for a hike. Just in case. </s>
They had it pinned…and had it pinned long enough for the PRs to show up and euthanize it.
Normal Cougars are not aggressive to humans. If an individual cougar becomes aggressive to humans, it’s not a normal cougar and it is killed.
When you’re in their territory they absolutely are. This is like saying grizzly bears are calm animals and don’t attack people unless there is something wrong with them.
You’re very much wrong. Normal behavior of cougars and yes bears is not aggressive to humans or to hunt humans. They want nothing to do with humans and their normal behavior is to get away from them.
The fuck are you talking about…
https://www.adn.com/alaska-beat/article/study-most-black-bears-attack-humans-may-see-them-prey/2011/05/11/
We’re prey animals to them until we’re not. Stop spewing uneducated bullshit. You’re a walking lunch box to most predators on this planet. They’re not really afraid of us until we make ourselves seem like a harder to kill meal.
Lol this is the second time I’ve seen that link. People furiously googling and getting one result. So here’s what I said before:
That article said 1) they are out hunting. Not that they are hunting humans, but I’m pretty sure you read it as such. And 2) “testing you out as a possible prey item,” said Dr. Herrero, a professor emeritus at the Univ". Testing mf testing. By bears in deep country that don’t have much experience with humans. They do not default think that you are prey. I’ve had bears size me up and you can just see their mind is “what are you, hey you’re not prey” before wandering off.
Anyway what I wanted to convey is that normal behavior (which is the vast, vast, vast majority of behavior) these animals do not see humans as prey. But yes in the very, very, excruciatingly rare occasions they attack humans, a portion of that can be something went wrong in their brain or in the situation and they may have seen you as prey. This is extraordinarily rare, as you can see by the rareness of attacks to even begin with. But people want to read that as normal behavior is hunting humans as prey, which it’s not. It’s the edge case. There’s a huge difference which I hope you now see.
I can’t keep correcting you all day, so ciao.
They post it because it’s fucking true. We are prey to bears and large cats. Stop acting like we’re not. They will turn tail usually when we present ourselves as a harder target, but acting like we’re not prey to them is stupid as fuck. It’s also rare for us to be attacked because we have destroyed their habitats and killed most of them off. Mt. Lions are considered threatened species and are just finally making a comeback. It’s like people saying wolves don’t look at us like a walking ham sandwich because there hasn’t been that many attacks…no shit because we killed pretty much all of them off.