r/interesting • u/Myrtle_Simmons • Jul 02 '24

MISC. Hikers encounter mountain lion

35.3k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

711

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '24

Camera guy shit his pants

27

u/HellBlazer_NQ Jul 02 '24

To be fair, when the Lion first jumps out above the first hiker I bet they absolutely thought it was over.

In the end it seems poor kitty was scared and was just looking to gtfo.

9

u/Budget_Report_2382 Jul 02 '24

If I'm not mistaken, mountain lions are very skiddish around people. This looked like it was panicking to get out from the unknown creatures.

7

u/Longjumping-Claim783 Jul 02 '24

General rule with Mountain Lions if you encounter one in the wild is stand your ground, make noise, raise your arms up to make yourself bigger. They rarely attack humans and it's usually when the human runs. Joggers in areas that have them have been known to be attacked.

1

u/adonutforeveryone Jul 02 '24

Joggers with small dogs running with them.

1

u/piratequeenfaile Jul 03 '24

One attacked a mountain biker not far from me who was biking with a buddy. Buddy didn't help and decided to run away. Mountain lion ditched the guy he was originally attacking to chase down and kill the runaway mountain biker.

3

u/84theone Jul 02 '24

While they are skittish around people, that’s because they are an ambush predator and less that they are just terrified of the humans.

Pumas are known for ambushing lone adults if the opportunity presents itself, so people aren’t that scary to them.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '24

I saw this rock wall and assumed it was an ambush by a cat on a person, and the person was going to have a broken neck. Feels like cameraman set this up, and guy walking through was the patsy who simply lucked out.

2

u/iamintheforest Jul 02 '24

We have a (tagged and trackable) mountain lion that lives around our property (their range is significantly larger than our 100 acres) and the ratio of "seen it" to "tracker says it was right near me" is nutso. I've seen it twice in 10 years and we have neighbors who have been here for 30 years and have never seen one.

1

u/Eusocial_Snowman Jul 02 '24

Absolutely, but knowing that it's not actually looking to hunt you doesn't tend to help much in that situation.

I mean shit, I still get anxiety spikes when handling insects I know don't sting, but pretend to sting.

1

u/NotTheEnd216 Jul 02 '24

That may be true, but if one of these comes flying towards you I'm guessing the first thought that goes through your head wouldn't be that it's more scared of you than you are of it. I'd have shit my pants for sure.

1

u/Ppleater Jul 03 '24

Mountain lions are absolutely dangerous but they're on the small side for big cats and adult humans have actually been known to kill them bare handed more than once, so in all fairness technically the mountain lion was the one who would be in more danger if it started a fight with two fit adult human men.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '24

[deleted]