Wild Puma Caught on Camera 33 Meters Up a Tree Stalking Kinkajous
A camera trap in French Guiana recorded a puma stalking along a branch 33 meters above the ground, hunting kinkajous. Researchers led by France's National Museum of Natural History describe the 2023 footage in a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed.
A wild puma (Puma concolor) was caught on camera 33 meters (108 feet) up a nutmeg tree in French Guiana, stalking kinkajous along a branch, according to a preprint paper led by France's National Museum of Natural History.
The footage was recorded on September 24, 2023, in the Saut Pararé forest. Pumas are not usually thought to climb that high into the rainforest canopy.
What the camera recorded
Just before 8:30 pm, an adult female kinkajou walked into view with a juvenile beside her. Kinkajous are nocturnal tree-dwelling mammals related to raccoons. The pair stayed on screen for about 10 seconds before leaping out of sight above the camera.
About 20 minutes later, at 8:49 pm, the puma emerged from the dark and moved along the same branch. It stopped to sniff spots where the kinkajous had been and appeared to be trying to pick up their trail.
The cat spent roughly 15 minutes prowling back and forth and checking the area. At 9:06 pm it turned back the way it came and disappeared. What happened next is unknown, because it took place off camera.
Why it matters to researchers
Most cat species can climb, but larger cats tend to stay on the ground. Lions and tigers are stockily built, which helps them overpower large prey but makes climbing harder. When they do go up, they usually stay on thick, lower branches.
Leopards are the most frequent climbers in the cat family and often stash kills in treetops. Some evidence suggests they may sometimes hunt tree-dwelling prey there, but it is rarely documented.
The authors say the footage raises open questions. "Are the latter really safe from climbing large cats in the forest canopy? How high can top predators climb into the treetops?" they write.
A rare event in a decade of footage
The puma encounter was the only cat-and-prey interaction among almost 40,000 individual events captured over ten years of observations. Spotting it was a side effect. According to the researchers, the project aimed "to identify and quantify fruit-eating mammals and birds visiting fruiting nutmeg trees."
The paper has not been peer-reviewed or formally published. It is currently available as a preprint on the bioRxiv server.
