Mountain Lions Get Physical on Treadmills to Help Study How They Use Energy
Terrie Williams wanted to study how mountain lions use energy when they hunt their prey. But first, she had to get them to do aerobics. “People just didn’t believe you could get a mountain lion on a treadmill, and it took me three years to find a facility that was willing to try,” said Williams, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. Williams needed to get a mountain lion to get physical so she could measure their oxygen consumption at different energy levels and calibrate her experiment to mountain lions in the wild. She finally found three captive animals she was able to test. Even on the treadmill calibration studies, she was learning things about the cats. Such as the fact that mountain lions aren’t that good at walking on treadmills. “They are power animals. They have a slow routine walking speed and use a burst of speed and the force of the pounce to knock down or overpower their prey,” she said. The captive animals