AHC: Mountain Lion Prides

Your challenge--by altering evolution itself, human settlement, or the rest of the fauna of the hemisphere, create cougars/mountain lions, Puma concolor, that exist and hunt in a group or pack like African lion prides. The idea is not totally ASB to me--mountain lion cubs that were raised and kept together often maintain a lifelong bond, so there are some social instincts in the species, however minimal.

Possible PoDs:

1--Greater survival of huge megafauna to both provide more food mass, and make it more difficult for any one lion to bring down its meal by itself

2--Flatter, less densely vegetated terrain across the Americas to make it harder for the cats to isolate themselves

3--Much later human settlement to reduce hunting pressure so that the "hermits" are not more likely to survive and reproduce


DaleCoz, I think you'd have fun with this one...
 
Your challenge--by altering evolution itself, human settlement, or the rest of the fauna of the hemisphere, create cougars/mountain lions, Puma concolor, that exist and hunt in a group or pack like African lion prides. The idea is not totally ASB to me--mountain lion cubs that were raised and kept together often maintain a lifelong bond, so there are some social instincts in the species, however minimal.

Possible PoDs:

1--Greater survival of huge megafauna to both provide more food mass, and make it more difficult for any one lion to bring down its meal by itself

2--Flatter, less densely vegetated terrain across the Americas to make it harder for the cats to isolate themselves

3--Much later human settlement to reduce hunting pressure so that the "hermits" are not more likely to survive and reproduce


DaleCoz, I think you'd have fun with this one...

If they're hunting as a pride then they aren't mountain lions, they're prairie lions. I can't think of any other environment where lions might out-compete wolves as pack hunters, because there just won't be enough big prey concentrated in herds. I think too that African lions are dependant on predictable rains to gather their prey seasonally. What is the American equivalent?

And what do they hunt? Bison, if they coevolved with lions, would be as tricky as Cape Buffalo
 

Driftless

Donor
Prey?

Pleistocene - horses?

White-tail Deer are common through the Great Plains & Eastern Woodlands. Mule Deer & Pronghorn Antelope are more common in the Western Plains. They typically only herd up at certain times of the year. Wapiti (Elk) form small herds. Their range once cover much of the US

Caribou do form large herds, but their historic range is farther north. Of course the direct competition are the Wolves.

Bison once covered many parts of the Great Plains in huge herds. Wolves did prey on bison herds, often picking out the calves or the weak. An adult male bison runs close to a ton, and they are astonishingly quick.(they can often out-sprint a quarter horse for about a hundred yards or so)
 
as much as you'd might disargee with it, the ruling seems to be "if the PoD aren't directly or indirectly caused by humans (or to humans), its ASB" ...
 
Besides, apparently lions are the ONLY cats that form prides.

http://www.thebigcats.com/lion/lion_social.htm said:
The lion is at once the most famous and the least typical member of the cat family. Sociality is probably the single most exciting aspect of lion life and, as compared to other cats, cannot be overemphasized. Other cats are solitary hunters; the lion is a cooperative group hunter. Other cats live alone, the lion lives in prides. The lions social level is closer to wolves and wild dogs than to the other cat species

So for Cougars to form prides would require them to have had a massively different evolution - and thus not be Cougars.
 

chrislondon

Banned
so we reword the challenge

Besides, apparently lions are the ONLY cats that form prides.
So for Cougars to form prides would require them to have had a massively different evolution - and thus not be Cougars.

There were american lions in prides. With the demise of lots of the megafauna approx. 12, 000 yrs ago they went, together with specialised hunters like the sabre toothed cat. Perhaps the link is both 'pack' big cats and 'big tooth' need large prey that they have specialised for to survive. So this comes down to how do we get a different range of mega fauna to survive the arrival of humans. This now sound like x number of other threads given the butterflies that would cause.
 
Your challenge--by altering evolution itself, human settlement, or the rest of the fauna of the hemisphere, create cougars/mountain lions, Puma concolor, that exist and hunt in a group or pack like African lion prides. The idea is not totally ASB to me--mountain lion cubs that were raised and kept together often maintain a lifelong bond, so there are some social instincts in the species, however minimal.
IIRC same is true of cheetahs (puma's closest living relatives) but they didn't develop prides. In fact, lions are only known species of cat to have prides.

A less ASB & non-evolutionary POD (evolutionary PODs are apparently forbidden in this subforum and are moved to ASB) would be to have American lion survive.
 
Very unlikely, mountain lions are more closely related to domesticated house cats than they are lions or tigers.
 
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