Mountain lions have been going medieval! No, I don't mean they're suddenly swinging around swords and maces. But they have been facing their own Black Death over the years. The same disease that almost wiped out humanity has been killing mountain lions for years.
In fact, in 2020, researchers found the plague in nearly half of big cats tested. However, that shouldn't alarm humans, even if it is worrisome for the cats. "The average person has essentially zero possibility of contracting plague from a mountain lion," study lead researcher Mark Elbroch, puma program director for Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization, told Live Science. "So please, do not read into our results as a reason to fear mountain lions."
Mountain Lions And Plague
Meanwhile, biologist Howard Quigley broke the news of plague several years ago after cats started dying in Wyoming.
"We didn't really think about plague at that time," Quigley said.. "In fact, it was in the middle of winter, and we thought maybe it starved to death or had some kind of winter stress. You start to get a clear picture of how hard it is to be a mountain lion in Jackson Hole. If you get to be an adult mountain lion in Jackson Hole, you're a survivor."
The number of mountain lions that die isn't up to an extinction-level event. Exposure can be a bit common among the animal kingdom in fact. "Plague is very much a part of the landscape in the western US and wild animals are frequently exposed to it," USDA National Wildlife Research Center biologist Sarah Bevins said. "[While] human plague infections are still relatively rare...untreated plague infections are still just as deadly as they were 500 years ago."
So what gives with mountain lions? Well, they likely get from hunting and killing rodents. It then hops to the cats themselves. Still, people shouldn't be too worried about catching it themselves. But it pays to be cautious. "Hunters and others handling mountain lions in this region should be aware of the possibility of [plague] exposure. Which left untreated is fatal," Elbroch said.
