A wild puma has been documented 33 meters (108 feet) above the forest floor in French Guiana, a discovery that disrupts long-standing scientific assumptions about the climbing capabilities of large cat species.
The encounter, captured by a camera trap in the canopy of a nutmeg tree within the Saut Pararé forest, suggests that the upper reaches of the rainforest may offer less protection to prey than previously believed.
An Unexpected Ascent
While smaller felids are known for their arboreal agility, the puma (Puma concolor) has historically been categorized as a terrestrial predator. Its muscular, stocky build is optimized for overpowering ground-based prey, leading biologists to largely dismiss the forest canopy as a typical hunting ground for the species.
The footage, detailed in a new preprint paper, tells a different story. At 8:30 pm on 24 September 2023, a camera trap originally deployed to monitor fruit-eating animals recorded a female kinkajou and her juvenile. Less than 20 minutes later, a puma scaled the same branch. The predator spent 15 minutes investigating the site, sniffing the wood where the kinkajous had been before disappearing into the darkness.
Challenging Canopy Safety
The presence of a top predator at such heights forces a re-evaluation of the canopy as a safe harbor for tree-dwelling species. Until now, the canopy was widely viewed as a refuge from large ground-based hunters.
“Questions thus arise about interactions between ground-dwelling top predators and their [canopy-dwelling] prey,” the researchers wrote in the preprint. They specifically asked whether prey is truly safe from large cats in the forest canopy and how high these predators are actually capable of climbing.
A Rare Behavioral Outlier
Despite the significance of the footage, such encounters remain exceptionally rare. The research team identified this interaction from nearly 40,000 separate events recorded over a decade of monitoring the Saut Pararé forest.
Leopards remain the only large cats known to regularly utilize the canopy, a behavior often associated with dragging kills into trees to protect them from scavengers.
This new evidence, which has not yet undergone peer review, suggests that pumas may also be able to move through the high canopy in search of sustenance. The puma was observed stalking along the branch and sniffing the exact spots where the kinkajous had been, suggesting an active interest in the scent trail.
Related reading