Scientists clamor to study cougar shot in Chicago

Likely journey from South Dakota would be among longest, experts say

By Jeremy Manier and Robert Mitchum | Tribune reporters

12:10 AM EDT, May 1, 2008

A footprint left by the cougar that was shot in Chicago earlier this month was found near Milton, Wis., in January. A necropsy on the animal showed that it did not have rabies, and DNA test results showed that it passed through Wisconsin and is related to cats in South Dakota. (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources photo by Doug Fendry / January 22, 2008)

DNA test results released Wednesday show that the cougar police shot in Chicago last month is the same one that frightened a southern Wisconsin man in January, and researchers hope cutting-edge forensic techniques will reveal even more about the animal's long, mysterious journey.

In the next few weeks scientists with the U.S. Forest Service will do a fine-grained genetic analysis that could reveal more about the 124-pound cat's ancestry—possibly even its mother or father. Cook County animal control officials also have sent out test samples of the cougar's claws, which may bear molecular clues about the cougar's diet and where it was born.

In the last decade such advanced techniques have become mainstays of the quest to understand how wild animals migrate, breed and come under threat from humans. The new tests suggest the Chicago cougar is related to animals from the Black Hills of South Dakota, raising the possibility that it journeyed 1,000 miles before making its last stand in Roscoe Village.

That voyage would be so unusual that officials had to pick and choose from scientists clamoring with ideas about how to study the cougar, said Donna Alexander, administrator of Cook County Animal and Rabies Control.

"It seemed like every researcher in the world wanted a piece of this cougar so they could test this and test that," Alexander said.

"We'll be hearing about the research from this cougar for the next 10 years," she said.

News that the cougar was the one spotted in Wisconsin confirmed the fears of people who had avidly followed the animal's exploits there, said Doug Fendry, a wildlife official with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

"I think a lot of people are going to be saddened to find out this is our cougar, shot down in the streets of Chicago," Fendry said.

It now appears the male cougar was about 2 or 3 years old, Alexander said, though further analysis of wear patterns on its teeth should give a clearer answer. The cougar's stomach was empty, not surprising for an animal that digests its meals completely within eight hours.

For more insight into the cat's origins, the local officials sent a chunk of the cougar's muscle to the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Mont. Lab supervisor Kristy Pilgrim compared its DNA with a drop or so of blood that a cougar left behind in January after trapper Kevin Edwardson came across it in an abandoned barn near Milton, Wis.

The Chicago DNA and the Wisconsin DNA matched so well that Pilgrim said there's only a 1 in 87 million possibility that it's merely a chance similarity.

"We looked at 11 variable regions of DNA to determine if these two samples matched, and they matched on all 11," Pilgrim said.

The Montana scientists could not run all the tests they wanted on the Wisconsin cougar because it had left only a drop or so of blood. The tests they did run traced the animal to the Black Hills population. A bigger sample from the dead cougar should allow them to examine 20 separate DNA regions, revealing more about the animal's ancestry and relation to specific populations.

They'll compare the DNA to about 300 cougar samples in a database the Montana team began in 2005, which includes individuals ranging from South Dakota to Arizona and Oregon. Scientists have collected those samples over the years in the course of other studies.

Somewhere in the bunch there may be a sample from the father or mother of the Chicago cougar, which is marked in the Montana lab as sample No. 08-2631.

"It would be hitting the jackpot" to find such a close relative, but it's possible, said Mike Schwartz, conservation genetics team leader at the Montana research station.

A different lab will study nail samples from the cougar's claws, Alexander said. With luck, the animal's diet may have left distinctive amounts of radioisotopes that are unique to specific regions of the country. That could reveal whether the cat was born in South Dakota or merely related to the cougars there, Alexander said.

"This radioisotoping is relatively new, but we're trying to learn as much as we possibly can," she said.

If the cougar did come from the Black Hills, its trek to Chicago probably would rank among the longest such migrations ever recorded, experts said. In 2005, researchers Daniel Thompson and Jonathan Jenks from South Dakota State University published an article showing that a young male cougar they had tagged in northern Wyoming turned up dead less than a year later near Red Rock, Okla., nearly 900 miles away.

Many factors might be driving cougars out of their established Western habitats into states where they haven't been spotted for more than a century. Clay Nielsen, director of scientific research with The Cougar Network, said years of prohibiting trapping and hunting cougars has led to overpopulation in South Dakota.

"It's gotten to a place where there's no space, and cougars have to go outside of the Black Hills," Nielsen said. "One really good place to try is to go along rivers and streams in Midwest and see what's out there."

Adrian Wydeven, a biologist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources who worked on the Wisconsin cougar investigation, said the animal may have followed rivers and wooded areas through North Chicago and Wilmette, and finally into the North Side.

Though cougar food options such as deer and livestock would be plentiful in Wisconsin and more rural parts of northern Illinois, the cougar may have stayed on the move with romantic hopes.

"If it wasn't finding a mate it would keep moving until it finds a place where it's likely to attract one," Wydeven said.

For Kevin Edwardson, who briefly came face to face with the cougar in January, news of the Chicago cougar's identity confirmed his worst fears, said his wife, Dorrie.

"It's too bad it went into a residential neighborhood," his wife said. "It's very saddening."

jmanier@tribune.com

rmitchum@tribune.com