Cougars are excellent swimmers

Although many cats don’t like wa­ter, cou­gars are ex­cel­lent swim­mers. And they don’t just go for little dips either. One, wear­ing a GPS col­lar, was tracked swim­ming 6.5 kilo­metres from down­town Nanaimo to Gabriola Island.

In the last two years I’ve seen four YouTube videos fea­tur­ing cou­gars swim­ming off Vancouver Island and the BC main­land. And in each video, the big cat went straight for the boat.

Was it curi­ous or had its chase in­stinct been triggered by the fast mov­ing ob­ject? Who knows, per­haps it just wanted to hitch a ride.

As curi­ous as you may be, there are doc­u­mented cases of cou­gars at­tempt­ing to climb into mov­ing boats so it’s best not to get too close.

A friend who loves to kayak asked what she should do if she saw a cou­gar swim­ming to­wards her kayak. My ad­vice: pray, pre­pare your bear spray and paddle like hell!

This is one of my fa­vour­ite swim­ming cou­gar videos. (It’s at the end of the article.)