The wilderness of North America is a place filled with potential dangers. Some of the continent’s most formidable predators reside here, including black and brown bears, whose powerful paws can easily harm a person, and mountain lions that move with stealth on silent feet.
While many hikers prepare for potential encounters with these feared animals, recent studies reveal that there is one creature these predators tend to avoid: humans.
In reality, attacks from these animals are so rare that individuals in North America are statistically more likely to be struck by lightning. Research indicates a reason for this: bears and mountain lions take significant measures to steer clear of humans whenever possible.
Ecologist Oswald Schmitz from Yale University highlights these findings in Current Biology, linking two studies—one focusing on bears and another on mountain lions.
In North America, brown bears (Ursus arctos) are involved in approximately 11.4 human attacks annually. Mountain lions (Puma concolor) attack only 4 to 6 people each year. The statistics for black bear (Ursus americanus) attacks are unclear, but 63 fatalities were recorded from 1900 to 2009.
Comparatively, around 580 people in the US and Canada are struck by lightning each year, according to data from the US and Canada. Therefore, lightning strikes are roughly 50 times more frequent than brown bear attacks, though risks vary by location and activity.
Why are these animal attacks so infrequent? Studies suggest it’s because these animals don’t merely react to human presence; they actively modify their behaviors to avoid us.
A study led by wildlife biologist Philip Manlick from the USDA Forest Service examined black and brown bears feeding at salmon streams in southeast Alaska. Researchers used motion-triggered speakers to play sounds of gulls, off-road vehicles, or human voices when bears approached, recording their reactions with cameras.
Bears were twice as likely to retreat when they heard vehicle sounds compared to gull sounds and almost 10 times more likely to flee from human voices.
This behavior has broader ecological implications. Bears transport captured salmon into nearby forests, where the remains decompose and enrich the ecosystem. Interrupting this nutrient cycle can have cascading effects on ecological processes.
The study on mountain lions, led by environmental scientist John Morgan at the University of California, Santa Cruz, presented similar findings. Researchers analyzed six years of GPS data from 36 tagged mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains, comparing it with data from the Strava fitness app that recorded human activity on trails.
Mountain lions didn’t just react to humans; they anticipated areas with high human activity and avoided them proactively. Even when residing in human-populated areas, mountain lions were not more aggressive. Increased attack rates in such regions were attributed to more frequent human-lion encounters.
These studies suggest that these predators view humans as a significant threat, leading to behavioral changes such as bears forgoing feeding opportunities and mountain lions altering their movement patterns based on human routines.
These animals are already doing much to prevent dangerous encounters with humans. The mountain lion study suggests that humans could also avoid situations that disrupt these animals’ avoidance strategies.
Related: One Super Predator in Africa Instills More Fear Than Lions
The common perception is that in encounters with carnivorous predators, humans are the prey. However, Schmitz argues that humans have both the power and the duty to protect these animals.
“By being cognizant of how they shape the landscape of fear experienced by carnivores and their prey species,” he writes, “humans can proactively adjust their behavior and spatial use of landscapes in ways that can transform the human-carnivore relationship from one of conflict to one of coexistence and thereby rebalance the attendant cascading effects that human fear effects have on wildlife communities and ecosystems.”
All three papers are available in Current Biology. You can read the bear study here, the mountain lion study here, and Schmitz’s dispatch here.
This article was fact-checked by Rebecca Dyer and edited by Rebecca Dyer. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know.
