What to know about unconfirmed mountain lion sightings in CT

Here’s what to know about mountain lions (and other substantial cats) in Connecticut.

How lots of mountain lion sightings does Connecticut have every single yr?

In accordance to Jason Hawley, a wildlife biologist for the Connecticut Section of Electrical power and Environmental Protection’s Wildlife Division, the department receives all over 100 sighting studies of mountain lions every calendar year, but on further investigation, a “good proportion” of the sightings conclude up being bobcats.

When was the very last confirmed mountain lion sighting in Connecticut?

Hawley said the final confirmed mountain lion sighting in the state was a person that was killed on the Merritt Parkway in 2011 when a car struck the animal close to Exit 55. 

And the past verified sighting prior to the 2011 instance would be “a pair hundred years” ago, according to Hawley.

What is the big difference concerning a mountain lion and a bobcat?

Also identified as cougars, panthers or pumas, mountain lions selection in color from tan to gray, according to the U.S. Office of Agriculture’s Forest Services. Grownup males can be all-around 8 ft in length and weigh among 130 and 150 pounds, although adult females can be 7 toes very long and weigh in between 65 and 90 lbs. Mountain lions also have tails that can develop up to 3 toes.

According to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, bobcats are component of the lynx genus, which means they are similar to other cats like the Canadian lynx, Iberian lynx and Eurasian lynx. Bobcats ordinarily have brown fur with a reddish tinge that is marked with black or brown places or stripes, in accordance to the National Zoo. They also have “facial ruffs” and “ear tufts” on the ideas of their ears, as very well as shorter tails.

Nonetheless, Hawley observed that Jap bobcats “tend to have pretty few spots compared to bobcats that are out west or even in the Midwest.” If they have places, they are typically in the white, underside element of the bodies or on the insides of their legs.

“We get a good deal of images despatched to us, and folks say, ‘I took this image of a mountain lion in my yard.’ And I’ll seem at it, and to me, it’s clearly a bobcat,” Hawley reported. “They’ll say, ‘Hey, you can see in the photo that it has a prolonged tail,’ and when I search at the photo, I say, ‘I see how you would see that since they way these cats walk, they’ll variety of stand and trail their rear leg. In particular when photos are blurry — which occurs a large amount in trail cameras or you will get photos taken at night or some thing on Ring cameras — that hind leg definitely does often look like a tail kind of curling up behind the animal.”