Be careful out there - Predator sightings by states

[packman]

Seems like Hawaii is the place to live for another obvious reason

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. If the heaviest land predator in your state weighs about 10 lbs.,

you probably don't have to worry about being eaten. Hawaii does have the Portuguese man-of-war and sea sakes, though.

[unc70]

2. Why not domestic dog in Hawaii?

Or do they have some rally big house cats?

[RainCaster]

3. Feral cats are more destructive

[Chainfire]

5. or big cat houses

[Cirque du So-What]

4. Alligators in Oklahoma?

Learn something every day.

[hlthe2b]

6. FL has Alligators too & I think they average heavier, tho not necessarily longer than American Crocs

[csziggy]

13. Plus the gators cover more territory

We don't get American crocodiles up here in North Florida. We do have alligators and black bears. And when Ted Turner is careless about his personal collection, we get mountain lions.

True story - not long after we bought our farm outside of Tallahassee back in 1978, a forester was driving out to advise us on how to manage our trees. He got here all excited - he'd seen a big cat with a long tail cross the rural highway a third of a mile north of our property. It jumped down off the bank above the road, covered with width of the road with one leap and jumped up onto the bank on the other side. Definitely not a bobcat with a very long tail.

We live a very far distance from the Everglades where Florida panthers live so it was not one of them. A few months later a friend who worked for Florida Wildlife told us that Ted Turner who owned a plantation in the next county had 'lost' a cougar from his collection of exotic animals. I suspect that was what the forester saw. I never heard any more about it - I doubt it was caught since this territory back then was all plantation east of here to the county line. I bet that cougar lived a fine life even though it was lonely since there are still lots of deer and turkey now even with the development that has happened in the last forty years.

[hlthe2b]

16. Interesting. Well, despite Grizzly Bears being killed off in Colorado during the 50s and Wildlife

officials adamantly denying their return, it seems hard to believe that they haven't made their way from Wyoming-Yellowstone, Idaho Montana. We have one heck of a lot of backcountry in which one or more could arrive and disappear. I suspect we will eventually see some genetic diversity in black bears that tell the (cross-mating) story.

I love mountain lions, myself, but Florida is surely not the terrain for them. The poor FL panther seemingly has no chance.

[Glorfindel]

7. I don't understand the numbers...

only 259 alligators in Mississippi? Only one black bear in South Dakota? One grizzly in Idaho?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. Those are reported sightings,

but they are obviously very low. Who is reporting, and who is keeping track? There are believed to be as many as 15,000 black bears in MN, and 24,000 in WI, for example. In those states they are all over the place, wherever there are forests. But in Nebraska about half the mountain lions were reported because they are all in a few small areas.

[Glorfindel]

9. Thanks! That makes much more sense

I have no idea who compiles the statistics. I live in the southern Appalachians, and there have been seven black bears reported within a quarter mile of my house in the last month...mothers and cubs, so there must be roving Papa Bears out there, too. I myself have never seen a wild bear, but I'd love to from a safe distance.

[petronius]

14. It looks like the map was originally posted on Reddit Data is Beautiful,

and the observations come from iNaturalist.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/

https://www.inaturalist.org/

Probably not an unbiased method of measuring species abundance, but a cool idea...

[Wicked Blue]

10. The District of Columbia has its own large vicious predator.

Benedict Donald

[UTUSN]

11. That was my first thought, too. Thought it regarded his trips today.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. He's certainly the heaviest one.

[japple]

15. Largest predator in my neck of the woods is Southern Male Human with

AR-15 or other weapon du jour. Often sighted in groups riding in pickup trucks or ORVs.