Benefits of Cougar Caches

 

Cougars are known for their caching behavior.  After a successful hunt, a cougar will eat his or her fill of a deer or elk carcass, then cover the leftovers with branches, tree limbs, or pine needles.  In arid deserts where little vegetation is available, soil, debris and rocks are used in their place.  The cougar will later return to the leftovers to feed until the deer is fully consumed or decomposed.  This behavior not only helps to keep the meat fresh, but serves an important ecological role.  Deer caches are also scavenged by a wide variety of other species, from birds of prey to 215 different species of beetles.  The decomposing remains of an animal hunted by a cougar deposit nitrogen and carbon into the soil, thus enriching plant communities and benefiting habitat quality over time.  One study called this behavior "gardening to hunt" and found that a single cougar over a nine-year period initiated 482 nitrogen-rich spots through caching prey, on average. 

The cougar's behavior of caching prey also traditionally benefited indigenous hunters who lived alongside these great cats.  The cougar, or mountain lion, was known as Náshdóítsoh in the Navajo language and appears in Navajo creation stories as a protector of one of the four original clans.  The passage below describes this relationship:

"In past times when food was scarce, Navajos often found themselves turning to the mountain lion for their very survival.  In these times of hardship, Navajos would seek out the remains of mountain lion kills, which the then would feast upon.  The Navajos who used this source of meat believed that the mountain lion purposefully made these kills and left them behind for the people to find and use.  In such cases, it was proper etiquette to respect the lion's generosity by not taking all of the meat, but rather to leave some behind for later use by the lion.  The Navajo term for this meat translates, appropriately I believe, to 'pity portion' - a gift from a fellow being that possesses far greater power, and certainly far greater compassion, than is often shown by its human counterpart.

Today it is the mountain lion who depends on man to ensure its survival.  Unlike man, however, the mountain lion does not need pity, but rather needs only our understanding and respect.  Throughout their range, mountain lions, like most predators, are under siege - feared and hated by humans who have not taken the time to learn about them, or from them.  They are slaughtered by ranchers not for the livestock they kill, but rather for the livestock they might kill.  Wildlife departments hunt them down in a mistaken belief that fewer lions will mean more deer and elk for license-buying hunters.  They are chased by hounds and shot defenseless out of trees for no other reason than for a sport hunter to prove his supposed manhood.  And all the while, we are destroying their habitat and thus forcing these great cats into urban areas where they are then killed in the interest of so-called 'public safety'.  

The traditional Navajo-mountain lion relationship is one we can all learn from."

- from The Navajo and the Animal People: Native American Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Ethnozoology by Steve Pavlik, 2014 (p.143)