1. This video of a cougar "escorting" a hiker is going around & most people are just tweeting out the part where she's behaving aggressively

What's missing is the part where he approached her kittens/cubs

Also want to use this opportunity to talk about safety around large cats

2. I apologize if I sound sanctimonious in this thread, it's not my intention. I spend a lot of time in the bush in Africa and around wildlife...it's my life's passion. So I just care about this stuff a lot...I truly don't mean to sound like a jerk.

3. The reason I used the term "escorting" in the first tweet is because that's what she's doing. That cougar is trying to push away someone she believes to be a threat to her cubs/kittens. She wants to get him out of the area. Her intention is not to kill him or even injure him.

4. The hiker who posted the video and many news outlets are saying she's "stalking" him. That's not what's happening in that video. Cougars are ambush predators...if she were stalking him we wouldn't see her on camera the whole time. She would have pounced on him out of nowhere.

5. I spend a lot of time convincing my friends they don't need to be frightened of animals and posting just a portion of videos like this doesn't help. People will assume this is how cougar's behave instead of knowing the full story which is the hiker approached her cubs/kittens!

6. The video of the cougar is so rare because cougars are so elusive. You could hike every day for decades and never see one. Cougars are intimidated by adult human beings and steer clear as much as possible...unless they're threatened or their cubs/kittens are threatened.

7. Ok and now for safety. Here comes the sanctimonious part because people are going to get annoyed when I criticize how he handled the encounter and say "easier said than done" or that he was in the moment and scared.

8. My point is simple and kind of harsh...don't put yourself in situations like this if you can't handle safety matters correctly. Don't go hiking or jogging alone on trails like this one: Slate Canyon unless you're prepared. I'm sorry, I know that sounds harsh!

9. The hiker handled some stuff correctly. He didn't run away. He walked backward while facing the cougar. But he mishandled a lot of stuff.

First, if you're dealing with an encounter like this and you film it and end up getting injured or killed I have no sympathy. Stop it.

10. Holding a phone puts you at a disadvantage. First, you're focused on the phone & holding it up & you may look at the screen averting your gaze too much. Second holding a phone prevents you from making yourself look bigger. Hiker keeps his body compact nearly the whole time

11. Usually you can drive a cougar away by making yourself look bigger and screaming aggressively at them in a sustained fashion. This hiker has a conversation with the cougar the whole time. He says, "No! Fuck you dude" - silly.

12. Your goal is to drive the cougar away with sustained verbal & physical aggression. Having a rambling conversation while backing up isn't going to make a new mother feel comfortable. She's going to feel the need to "escort" you out further than normal from her kittens/cubs.

13. If making yourself look bigger and being verbally aggressive doesn't lead a cougar to run off (again, our hiker didn't do either), then the next step is to throw what you can in the direction of the cougar. 95% of the time this will do the trick.

(keep reading)

14. This is an important part of fending off a cougar...you must not bend or crouch down under any circumstances. You may think you can do it quickly but you will never be quicker than a large cat who feels threatened and while you're bending down you could also trip.

15. What drove me nuts about this video is that hiker was actually in the perfect environment to grab something. There were tree branches at his level and at certain points there were rocks to his left he could have grabbed without bending or crouching down.

16. Instead he waits for six minutes to finally bend down (don't do this!) and throw a rock at the cougar. See how fast she ran away? Cougars don't want to be near us...he could have scared her off from the start even with a branch.

17. So what do you do if you throw something near the cougar and they're still approaching you? That's when you have to throw something at the cougar aggressively and intend on hitting it. Don't worry, you're not gonna kill the cougar with a rock or branch.

18. And as always if the cougar does attack you, fight back like hell. Go absolutely insane and fight back aggressively and don't give in.

(this is so rare, you're more likely to die from a snake bite. Fewer than 200 cougar attacks have been recorded in the past century)

19. BTW why did I repeatedly say kittens/cubs instead of one or the other? Because Twitter is awful and if I said kittens people who don't know better would have tried to correct me and if I said cubs, then people who prefer saying kittens would have corrected me

Awful website!