AFP wrote:The cat is back: myths smashed as cougars stalk Quebec
Tue Mar 1,12:34 PM ET
MONTREAL (AFP) - One of North America's greatest myths -- the apparent demise of the cougar from the continent's eastern regions north of Florida -- has been shattered, thanks to the big cat's appetite for sex.
The cougar was officially declared extinct in its traditional natural habitat, the forests of eastern North America, in 1938.
But the feline fugitive has broken cover in Canada, according to the provincial government in French-speaking Quebec, smashing a myth reminiscent of the debate on Scotland's purported Loch Ness Monster.
The cougar -- or puma, or to use its official name, the 'felis concolor' -- was declared extinct after the last known one was killed in southern Quebec, close to the border with the US state of Maine.
But, starting in 1955, there have been sightings of the "extinct" feline with authorities receiving increasing reports of big cat sightings in the 1980s, in Quebec and in the neighbouring provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, as well as across the border in Maine and Vermont.
Helene Jolicoeur, a biologist with Quebec's Department of Wildlife and Parks, told AFP: "We (now) have nearly one hundred sightings a year."
But the debate continued with most people believing the sightings were as mythical as UFOs and Scotland's Nessie, because -- like UFOs and Nessie -- there was no irrefutable proof or photograph of the elusive cat; there were no skin or fur scrapings or urine or fecal samples to submit to DNA tests.
In addition, none of the region's wildlife officials ever found the remains of deer or other wildlife which had been visibly attacked by cougars, said Jolicoeur.
Excitement mounted in 1992 when a cougar was killed in Abitibi, in the northwest of Quebec; but DNA tests showed that the animal came from Chile and was probably released -- or escaped -- from captivity.
But believers persisted and the myth that the North American Cougar was extinct in the area was finally broken thanks to the efforts of biologist Marc Gauthier, who patiently laid out a trail of branches with cougar skins fastened with adhesive and covered with cougar urine.
The rest was left to the natural instincts of the big cats -- which, when in heat, left their own mating messages on the scent-traps soon after they were first laid out in 2002.
Individual traps aroused "just two or three" amorous cougars, said Francois-Joseph Lapointe of the University of Montreal's ecological laboratory.
Genetics experts at the university formally identified six individual cougars, two in New Brunswick and four in Quebec, he said.
But mystery still cloaks the cougar's return.
Among unanswered questions: are these six cougars really descendants of the small number that populated the eastern part of the continent until the start of the 20th century?
Or, are they simply the descendants of some cougars which had been held in captivity and had either escaped or were released? Or, are they animals that worked their way across the continent from the West?
"For the moment, one can only say (from the urine samples) if it is a cougar or not. We do not know what sub-species it may belong to," Lapointe said.
"The problem with skins is that one cannot go very far in scientific analysis. There is not enough DNA, either in quantity or quality, and don't forget the samples are perishable."
Even with the latest findings, he admitted, it might not be possible to determine which sub-species the droppings came from -- descendants of the original regional cougars or simply cousins of the western cat.
He is still hoping that skins from four cougars killed in Quebec more than a hundred years ago, and kept in museums, might retain enough DNA evidence to provide an accurate match.
"If the current samples match those of a hundred years ago," he said, "then we can say that they are really eastern cougars, directly related to the earlier ones."
So why is this important? Simple, if a creature as large as the cougar could be spotted hundreds of times while being considered extinct is later proven to be alive, it means that many other creatures known only from sightings might also be real.
So now we need to figure out how to get a sasquatch to fall for the old fake-female-in-heat-trick.
