\u201cWhen we start to rewild the land, the species that are coming back might find a system that is a bit different from the one that they used to inhabit 100 years ago\u2014and they adapt to it,\u201d says Emiliano Donadio, science director at the Fundaci\u00f3n Rewilding Argentina<\/a> and a coauthor of the study.<\/p>\n (How a penguin ‘massacre’ led to historic new protections in Argentina<\/a>)<\/p>\n Camera traps unveil puma predation<\/p>\n The researchers didn\u2019t initially set out to study this unique predator-prey relationship. Lead author and ecologist Mitchell Serota<\/a>, then at the University of California Berkeley, was working with Fundaci\u00f3n Rewilding Argentina to study how wildlife responds when human pressures are removed from former ranchlands. \u201cI went down to Patagonia to understand restoration outcomes broadly. The penguins weren\u2019t the original focus at all,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In 2023, Serota and his colleagues reported that the big cats were actually feeding<\/a> on the gawky birds. \u201cThat interaction was known, but we thought it was minor,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe just a handful of individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n The team had installed 32 camera traps across the park and tracked 14 adult pumas<\/a> (Puma concolor) with GPS collars between September 2019 and January 2023. Combining that data with field observations, the researchers quickly realized pumas were snacking on penguins much more frequently than expected.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were getting repeated detections of pumas right around the penguin colony,\u201d Serota recalls. \u201cThat\u2019s when it became clear this was not a side note. It was something shaping how these animals were using the landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n A new food web takes shape<\/p>\n Because Magellanic penguins<\/a> (Spheniscus magellanicus) spend much of their lives at sea, they are unusual prey for a large terrestrial carnivore whose diet is mostly made up of land mammals, such as deer, guanacos<\/a> (relatives of llamas), and hares. But during their breeding season\u2014roughly September through April\u2014the seabirds huddle on land in large numbers. At Monte Le\u00f3n, more than 40,000 breeding pairs nest along a coastline of about two kilometers long.<\/p>\n (What Magellanic penguins are teaching us about survival<\/a>)<\/p>\n For a puma, whose territory can cover hundreds of square kilometers, this creates an odd situation: an extremely abundant food source, concentrated in a very small area, and available only part of the year. The team found that the population density remained similar\u2014around 13 cats per 100 square kilometers\u2014whether penguins were present or absent. So, penguins did not create more pumas, but reorganized how these cats share space.<\/p>\n Penguin-eating pumas, it turns out, behave quite differently from those who prefer other diets in Patagonia. The study found that bird-eating big cats shared the same area much more frequently than non-bird-eating ones and were not attacking each other as often as one would expect. \u201cIn other words, penguin-eating pumas were quite tolerant of the presence of one another,\u201d says Donadio, who is also a National Geographic Explorer<\/a>.<\/p>\n Such tolerance was a surprise, given the pumas\u2019 loner stereotype. In Patagonia, these big cats are out in the open, as they are the top predator. \u201cUnlike Africa, they don\u2019t need to scrum together to take down prey twice or three times their size. And unlike North America, there are no grizzly bears, black bears or wolves, so these cats are not sneaking around in the trees at night like they are up here,\u201d says Jim Williams<\/a>, who worked for decades as a biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks\u00a0and wrote about the relationship between the seabirds and big cats in his book Path of the Puma.<\/p>\n In Monte Le\u00f3n, pumas often visit the penguin colony in the evenings to hunt. Gonzalo Ignazi<\/p>\n To some degree, it makes sense that pumas pounced on the new food source, as penguins are low-risk prey. \u201cBig cats\u2014lions, panthers, cougars, pumas\u2014always prey on the most abundant and vulnerable food sources available,\u201d says Williams, who was not affiliated with the current study. \u201cThat\u2019s not shocking from an ecological point of view or a natural behavior, but it is for people who don’t know that penguins and pumas overlap,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n But the behavior changes are surprising. \u201cWe tend to think of pumas as extremely aggressive and intolerant,\u201d Donadio says. \u201cBut when food is abundant and concentrated, there\u2019s no need to defend it. They become more socially tolerant,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4c0ac393891e2f1d11b5d78f219dd339.jpeg\"\/)
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