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RE: The eastern cougar (Puma concolor cougar) is now officially declared extinct!
Great article. I live in North Carolina and have a BS in Ecology and Environmental Biology. In my classes we were told there were no cougars left in the state. It was impossible for them to sustain a population. The last ones were extirpated in the early 1900's. Never the less, there are still people that claim to have seen a cougar. Old timers that swear they spotted one. I always wondered what these people were actually seeing.
Thank you, @kiristin! It's nice to see another ecologist around here :)
It's very interesting to be able to read about first-hand knowledge here in my comment section, so thank you so much for sharing!
I'm personally very pessimistic about people who claim to see animals that are not expected to be found in an area. Most of the times they have just seen some blurry movement and assumed that is was a cougar or another interesting animal. I've seen some reports of false claims of wolves here in Norway, and you would not believe how many people that report seeing wolves, and later have the sightings verified to be either foxes, dogs, lynxes or at times even smaller mammals. It's pretty common to let the imagination run wild when you see something in the wild like this.
Of course, every once in a while sightings like these end up being true, so we can't really just discredit all of these automatically either. It would be cool to know for sure, but we can at least say for certain that they have not seen an eastern cougar ;) hehe
Best regards from @valth
Thank you for the intelligent discourse. You're reply is perfect and I couldn't agree more. I dislike arguing with those that claim they are still around as I am quite pessimistic about it myself. Like you said,
"It's pretty common to let the imagination run wild when you see something in the wild like this."
Most people see what they want to see and who doesn't want to see an animal claimed to not exist? I think it would be awesome but taking facts into consideration is important. Don't get me started on the Bigfoot sightings LOL. Cute Pug picture by the way! Apologies for my upvote not being worth anything. I just began my Steemit journey and am learning the ropes.
@kristin its very good to hear from you, an ecologist himself.
And I don't think upvoting powers matters as long as you have got something genuine to share with us.
Yep, @xabi is right. Sharing genuine comments is very valuable (but sadly a lot of other bloggers here don't think so). However, I'm very interested in learning what other people think of the topics I write about, because this will expand my knowledge of the topic, as well as giving me new opinions that I might not otherwise have considered myself.
@xabi Kind of you to say. The Steemit community seems to be a positive and accepting platform. I am glad to have the opportunity to participate and join in discussions to further my understanding and those I communicate with on this forum.
Yeah, exactly! It makes for a much better story to tell if you claim to see an extinct, a rare or even a made-up animal than just another fox :) But it can of course lead to some conflict if you tell them this in person.
Thanks! Don't worry about the upvote; everyone starts somewhere. It takes a long time to build up Steem Power to give good upvotes. And contributions in the form of good, genuine comments are much more valuable to me than a few dollars worth of upvotes to be honest ;)
By the way, if you ever have any questions about Steem or Steemit, don't hesitate to ask them in one of my posts. Just make sure to that you are writing a top-level comment, so I get notified about it. Some parts of Steemit can be pretty difficult to understand for a new users, so don't be afraid to ask questions.
I much appreciate your kind words. I am quite eager and excited about Steemit but still have much to learn. The users I have interacted with have all been welcoming and helpful. It is a welcome change from other social pages I have taken part. Thank you for the offering of advice. I am sure I will have questions is the days to come.
Yeah, most of the community here is really trying its best to be nice and helpful, but there are of course some rotten apples here as well.