Rare predator with missing teeth is mysteriously found dead in Arkansas, officials say
A rare predator was recently found dead in the northern Arkansas wilderness, raising questions about where it came from and what killed it.
The animal, a mountain lion, was spotted in the Sylamore Wildlife Management Area, in Stone County, the state Game and Fish Commission said in a Feb. 9 news release.
It’s the first time a cougar has been found dead in the state since 2014, when a deer hunter fatally shot a 148-pound male in southern Arkansas, according to officials. Before that, a mountain lion hadn’t been reported killed in the state since 1975.
However, this newly discovered big cat in the Sylamore WMA wasn’t shot, and there’s no evidence it was hit by a car either, officials said. Its cause of death is, at least for now, a mystery.
The 118-pound, 7-foot long male was examined by wildlife experts. The cougar was “extremely thin” with “severely worn, broken and missing teeth,” experts said, and its “stomach was empty.”
“Further examination will involve testing for viruses and toxins,” the Commission said, adding that tissue samples will also be sent out for testing.
Male cougars generally weigh between 145-170 pounds, according to the National Park Service, meaning this particular cat was significantly underweight.
Could the mountain lion have simply starved to death? It’s known to happen, but only rarely, experts say.
“Disease and starvation are occasional causes of cougar deaths,” according to the NPS, but “competition with other cougars or predators and human hunting are the main causes of mortality.”
Though they grow to be large, powerful apex predators, survival is often still a struggle for mountain lions. Roughly half of kittens don’t survive their first year, the NPS says.
They could once be found all throughout Arkansas, but had more-or-less vanished by 1920, the Commission said, but there have been 23 confirmed sightings in the state beginning in 2010.
“They are typically shy and reclusive, and they rarely attack humans,” state officials said. “They have learned to avoid people, and they usually run away if they hear or see humans.”
Mountain lion sightings alone don’t mean they’re established in the state, or are reproducing, and officials have said in the past that there are no breeding pairs in Arkansas, and lions seen in the state likely wandered in from elsewhere, KATV reported in 2015.
A DNA analysis of the mountain lion killed by a hunter in 2014 indicated that it “most likely” came from the Black Hills of Wyoming or South Dakota, officials said.
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