I'm talking about mountain lion scat, please!

Occasionally I find large turds, made principally of hair, in areas where I know there are lions. However, coyotes leave very similar turds when their diets are mostly rabbits and rodents.

Do I have to break apart the turds to tell? The coyote turds have lots of small bones. I'm guessing those would be absent in the lion turds?

I've looked at books on the subject, and the coyote and lion scats seem to overlap in size.

The lion scat smells like pepper and contains little bells and hats with eyes in the back.

MoapaPk wrote:I'm talking about mountain lion scat, please!

Occasionally I find large turds, made principally of hair, in areas where I know there are lions. However, coyotes leave very similar turds when their diets are mostly rabbits and rodents.

Do I have to break apart the turds to tell? The coyote turds have lots of small bones. I'm guessing those would be absent in the lion turds?

I've looked at books on the subject, and the coyote and lion scats seem to overlap in size.

If it's full of hair, it probably isn't a cougar. Cougars are primary hunters and tend to eat only the good parts of their prey, which doesn't include skin/hair. A researcher near here said it was a really bad sign when we found cougar scat with hair in it, since he said that it meant the cougar was not healthy. Unhealthy cougars are the ones that go after people.

Thanks; I guess I've over-stated the hair amount; the suspect scats look like this:
http://www.bear-tracker.com/cougarscat.html

only quite a bit larger. What I thought was hair may be just the sinews in the weathered older scat. However, I've broken apart similar, smaller scats and found lots of small bones.

My scat book says:
Bee-bop-a-doo, bo-bo, biddily-biddily-boo, yibbidy-yah-yah. Apologies to Mel and Ella.

MoapaPk wrote:I'm talking about mountain lion scat, please!

MoapaPk wrote: Occasionally I find large turds, made principally of hair, in areas where I know there are lions.

Now (to show my ignorance of the subject, and thereby maybe learn something new and useful), I would have answered 'C - cougars bury it' on a quiz. Apparently not?

What do you folks that know about this say?

i usually go by taste

Cougars sometimes bury scat.

drpw wrote:i usually go by taste

Oh, crap, I was looking for a REAL answer....

Well, I don't know about cougar crap. But I can call myself a TIGER crap expert.

The two beasts are about the same size, and since they are both cats, I think this might help you out.

Here is what it looks like. The width is a little smaller than the opening of your coffee mug. Amount? enough that you'll want a shovel! You'll have a range of color and texture, depending on what they snacked on. If it was a bunny, you'll get a LOT of fur. If they chewed up a bone, it will be dominant white in color and quite hard. If they ate a big chunk of meat, you'll just see a big hunk of poo. If they are sick, it can be really gross.

I'll see if I can get a photo posted. I do have some, believe it or not....

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tigerlilly wrote:The width is a little smaller than the opening of your coffee mug.

Of all the things that could be used for scale, you picked one that is used for consuming food.

I'll try again

Hmmmm, I'm going to visit BYU. The cheerleaders do Cougar scat at games. (Boo-boobie-doo BYU, yabba yabba cou-cou-cougars, go team-biddly-bop-go!)

Seriously though (if this thread can be serious), tigers are a lot bigger than mountain lions, and they tend to drink more water than our desert pumas.

The pictures that I've seen posted for cougar scat make it seem fairly small. I looked through my pics, and could find only this one. Oddly enough, that's about the same size as the (supposedly) real cougar scat shown here..

tigerlily, I DO hope that scat is from a zoo, and not, say, your house.

There are different types of tigers. The photo of me is with the (very large) Siberian tiger.

I picked this poo picture, because it is from a female Sumatran tiger, which I guessed might be approximately in the weight range of a cougar.

This poo is not from the much larger Siberian tiger.

"...Cougars are about (8 ft) long nose to tail, Males typically weigh 53 to 90 kilograms (115 to 198 pounds), averaging 62 kg (137 lb).

...Sumatran tigers average 204 cm (6 feet, 8 inches) in length from head to tail and weigh about 136 kg (300 lb). Females average 198 cm (6 feet, 6 inches) in length and weigh about 91 kg (200 lb)."

I think it is safe to say, the poos will be similar looking, just a little smaller. They're still pretty big, though.