Prey of seals and orcas at sea, the penguin becomes the target of pumas on land, in Patagonia: “Food can unite predators”

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He noted that cougars generally prefer to hunt herbivorous mammals rather than birds as small as Magellanic penguins.

“This is an extraordinary example of the flexibility of large carnivores,” Goheen said.

At the beginning of the 20th century, extensive sheep farming decimated the Patagonian pumas. With the disappearance of these predators, Magellanic penguins, which lived primarily on oceanic islands, established large breeding colonies on Argentina’s coasts. Conservation efforts have brought cougars back to the region, creating the conditions for new interactions between these animals.

Mitchell Serota, an ecologist and lead author of the study, was interested in how Magellanic penguins, as a new food source, were reshaping cougar movement patterns across the landscape. He was also curious about how cougars interacted with each other and what their population density was.

To understand the behavioral changes, Serota, who completed the research at the University of California, and some of his colleagues installed GPS collars on 14 pumas in Monte León National Park. They collected information from 2019 to 2023. Because cougars are migratory animals and are present in the park’s breeding colony for a little more than half the year, scientists tracked their movements and interactions throughout the seasons.

They found that the cougars’ behavior changed as they spent more time near the penguin colony. Cougars that hunted penguins had smaller territories than cougars that did not hunt, and the big cats interacted more frequently with each other around the colony.

Briana Abrahms, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the research, was familiar with cougar attacks on penguins. She had studied a penguin colony north of Monte León and thought attacks were relatively rare.

“What surprised me at first, although I think it makes perfect sense, is the amount of predation that is hitting these penguins,” she said, “and how well the cougars have adapted to this new food source.”

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After integrating GPS tracking with camera trap data, the scientists also discovered what may be the highest density of cougars ever documented in a specific location, Serota said. Although cougars are generally solitary creatures, their population density in this area was about double that seen elsewhere, leading to increased interactions between the cats. Serota compared their presence to that of grizzly bears that tolerate each other during salmon migration.

“Penguins seem to do something similar to cougars,” he said. “Food can unite predators.”

Changes in ecosystems can affect when, where, and how predators obtain their food, leading to broader ecological effects. For the region’s cougars, which typically feed on guanacos, a llama-like herbivore, these ecological effects are still unknown.

“Since cougars and guanacos are the dominant predator-prey relationship in the region, changes in how cougars move and hunt can have huge ripple effects,” Serota said. Defenseless penguins, easy prey for cougars, could even participate in this chain reaction. “Will we see a situation in the future where penguins return to living primarily on oceanic islands?” » asked Goheen.

For Serota, the study showed that a new predator-prey relationship, like that between cougars and penguins, transforms the ecosystem.

“Restoring wildlife to today’s transformed landscapes does not mean simply returning ecosystems to the past,” Serota said. “This can create entirely new interactions that reshape animal behavior and populations in truly unexpected ways.”

A common hypothesis in the scientific literature is that reintroduction of large carnivores into ecosystems can restore them to their original state. But in the days when carnivores were absent, other things changed too.

“You’re reinserting carnivores into an ecosystem that doesn’t necessarily look like the one they went locally extinct from,” Goheen said. Animals are faced with new situations that they must cope with.