Menu
Reported mountain lion really a bobcat
Biologists for the Missouri Department of Conservation have determined that photos of a reported mountain lion taken in the Mosby area of Clay County area are actually a bobcat.
A citizen took the photos late last week near U.S. 69 and she reported them to Conservation officials. A Kansas City area television station has broadcast reports about the incident.
On Monday, Wildlife Damage Biologist Todd Meese, a member of the department's Mountain Lion Response Team, went to the site where the photographs were taken along with Conservation Agent Scott Stephens.
They placed life-size cutouts of a bobcat and a mountain lion where the animal had stood and took photos from the highway where the citizen's had photographed the cat. The size of the cat in the new photo matched the bobcat cutout.
Meese also inspected tracks at the scene.
"They were definitely bobcat-sized tracks," Meese said.
Fur coloration and a bobbed tail visible in the original photographs indicate it was a bobcat, he said.
Jeff Berringer, an MDC furbearer biologist who chairs the Mountain Lion Response Team, also looked at digital photographs of the cat and said he was confident it was a bobcat.