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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsBe careful out there - Predator sightings by states
Seems like Hawaii is the place to live for another obvious reason
The Velveteen Ocelot
(116,447 posts)you probably don't have to worry about being eaten. Hawaii does have the Portuguese man-of-war and sea sakes, though.
unc70
(6,159 posts)Or do they have some rally big house cats?
RainCaster
(11,038 posts)Chainfire
(17,757 posts)Cirque du So-What
(26,183 posts)Learn something every day.
hlthe2b
(102,898 posts)csziggy
(34,144 posts)We don't get American crocodiles up here in North Florida. We do have alligators and black bears. And when Ted Turner is careless about his personal collection, we get mountain lions.
True story - not long after we bought our farm outside of Tallahassee back in 1978, a forester was driving out to advise us on how to manage our trees. He got here all excited - he'd seen a big cat with a long tail cross the rural highway a third of a mile north of our property. It jumped down off the bank above the road, covered with width of the road with one leap and jumped up onto the bank on the other side. Definitely not a bobcat with a very long tail.
We live a very far distance from the Everglades where Florida panthers live so it was not one of them. A few months later a friend who worked for Florida Wildlife told us that Ted Turner who owned a plantation in the next county had 'lost' a cougar from his collection of exotic animals. I suspect that was what the forester saw. I never heard any more about it - I doubt it was caught since this territory back then was all plantation east of here to the county line. I bet that cougar lived a fine life even though it was lonely since there are still lots of deer and turkey now even with the development that has happened in the last forty years.
hlthe2b
(102,898 posts)officials adamantly denying their return, it seems hard to believe that they haven't made their way from Wyoming-Yellowstone, Idaho Montana. We have one heck of a lot of backcountry in which one or more could arrive and disappear. I suspect we will eventually see some genetic diversity in black bears that tell the (cross-mating) story.
I love mountain lions, myself, but Florida is surely not the terrain for them. The poor FL panther seemingly has no chance.
Glorfindel
(9,767 posts)only 259 alligators in Mississippi? Only one black bear in South Dakota? One grizzly in Idaho?
The Velveteen Ocelot
(116,447 posts)but they are obviously very low. Who is reporting, and who is keeping track? There are believed to be as many as 15,000 black bears in MN, and 24,000 in WI, for example. In those states they are all over the place, wherever there are forests. But in Nebraska about half the mountain lions were reported because they are all in a few small areas.
Glorfindel
(9,767 posts)I have no idea who compiles the statistics. I live in the southern Appalachians, and there have been seven black bears reported within a quarter mile of my house in the last month...mothers and cubs, so there must be roving Papa Bears out there, too. I myself have never seen a wild bear, but I'd love to from a safe distance.
petronius
(26,620 posts)and the observations come from iNaturalist.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/
https://www.inaturalist.org/
Probably not an unbiased method of measuring species abundance, but a cool idea...
Wicked Blue
(5,886 posts)Benedict Donald
UTUSN
(70,992 posts)The Velveteen Ocelot
(116,447 posts)japple
(9,914 posts)AR-15 or other weapon du jour. Often sighted in groups riding in pickup trucks or ORVs.