This mountain lion wanted no trouble from the skunk. | Robert Martinez / Parliament of Owls
A photographer has captured an incredible interaction between a skunk and a mountain lion on one of his trail cameras.
Robert Martinez, otherwise known as Parliament of Owls, shared the remarkable footage captured in the Angeles National Forest of California on his Instagram page.
“Mountain lion vs. skunk! Who’s gonna win this one?” Martinez writes. “Check out this little fearless warrior skunk confronting an apex predator in the Angeles National Forest. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first watched this footage. As I always say, expect the unexpected when setting up trail cameras in the wild. This rare moment was truly a wild one.”
The plucky skunk can be seen fearlessly walking toward the mountain lion, which is trying to crouch unnoticed in the dark. When the skunk spots the big cat, the cougar walks around the skunk so to avoid him. The striped skunk watches the lion leave his area, standing his ground the entire time.
In a later clip, the pugnacious skunk then takes umbrage with the trail camera itself, staring it down and stomping its feet. “At this point, I think the skunk is challenging my camera,” Martinez adds.
Martinez himself appears in the video later on as he sits in the location the wild footage was filmed. Due to the nature of camera trap photography, the skunk and mountain lion video was filmed in 2022 — it can often take a long time to retrieve the footage.
The mountain lion tries to evade the skunk’s gaze but to no avail.
Martinez regularly captures amazing footage from the wilds around Los Angeles. His camera traps regularly catch glimpses of mountain lions, bears, and owls. Just recently, he shared an amazing video showing the “delightful diversity deep down in the canyon in the Angeles National Forest.”
In 2022, PetaPixel featured Martinez’s footage showing a bear making himself a bed and taking a nap in the forest.