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I've spent much of my working life
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trying to film big cats.
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I've watched them in the wild
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and analyzed the footage in the editing room,
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which has given me a real insight into their behavior.
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Today, we can see these amazing predators
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on our screens any time we choose.
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But until quite recently,
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we knew practically nothing about them.
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Big cats are normally shy and very secretive.
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Today, their populations are shrinking fast.
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But now we have the means to view them
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in more detail than ever.
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And learn the intricacies of their lives.
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Which is just as well, because we need to
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find ways of living alongside them,
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before they disappear forever.
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To most people, this cat is a puma.
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But it also goes by the names of cougar or mountain lion.
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However, these cats are only distantly related to lions.
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They're much more closely related to cheetahs.
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And while pumas are often found in mountains,
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they're just as at home in the lowlands,
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dense forests,
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treeless pampers,
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or deserts.
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They're among the most versatile of all cats.
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But just because they're widespread,
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adaptable, and found over most the Americas,
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doesn't mean they're easy to see.
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As recently as 20 years ago,
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to see a puma anywhere in the wild,
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for more than a fleeting moment,
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or far in the distance, was almost impossible.
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To study pumas by normal observation
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was out of the question.
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For centuries the puma kept its secrets mostly to itself,
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but recently a few dedicated scientists and filmmakers,
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along with modern technology such as camera traps,
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have allowed us to crack the hardest of nuts,
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observing pumas in the wild.
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These rare images are the result of many seasons of work,
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and give us a unique insight into how pumas
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survive the harsh conditions of a Montana winter.
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Casey Anderson has spent years trying to get close to pumas,
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and his efforts have paid off.
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This is Mama Mo,
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and her cubs.
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She's given Casey privileged access to her life,
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as long as he keeps his distance,
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or uses remote cameras.
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The cubs are a few months old and desperate to
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go out and study the local wildlife.
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They need to know what they can eat,
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and what they should avoid.
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Elk tend to stay away from places
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where pumas can hide if the possibly can.
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Big horn sheep are an option,
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but are also agile and fast on rocky slopes.
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Pumas are, above all else, deer hunters.
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Here in Montana they have white-tailed deer,
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as well as the very similar mule deer.
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Mama Mo likes to hunt at dusk.
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The low contrast light makes her very hard to see.
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When the deer are distracted,
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she can move rapidly towards them.
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This time, the white-tailed deer escape,
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and the mule deer wasn't so lucky.
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This will feed the family for days.
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Typically, pumas don't leave a kill
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until everything is gone.
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But to just focus on one particular cat
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as a guide to the behavior of such
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a widely distributed species,
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would be misleading.
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In the far south of South America,
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in Chile's Torres Del Paine National Park,
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deer are rare,
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and pumas hunt a very different kind of animal.
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The guanaco, a member of the camel family.
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Here there are no rules, or other predators,
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and the pumas can relax in the open.
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This is a world they can claim as their own.
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As a testament to their success,
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there are plenty of giant scavengers
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whose very existence depends on the cats.
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These are condors, the biggest vultures in the world.
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For me, as a naturalist, this is an interesting situation.
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The guanaco is one of a few camel species
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that survived the Ice Age extinctions,
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but this open country grazer wouldn't have been
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on the menu for pumas in the Ice Age,
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because once, wolves lived here too.
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Today the adaptable puma has found a way
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of surviving on treeless grasslands.
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A mother can take her cubs into open country,
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in a way that her northern cousins could only dream of.
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But two decades ago, these pumas were
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just as shy of humans as those in the north.
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Gradually, the pumas of Torres Del Paine
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have become more and more visible.
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And now give us an amazing opportunity
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to see puma behavior close up.
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We came here at the suggestion of filmmaker Christian Munoz,
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who's been visiting this place for decades
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in search of pumas.
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He knows many of the cats in the area,
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and even watched some of them grow up.
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They behave naturally when he's close.
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They feel safe enough to relax in between takes.
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Since I came the first time back in the 80s,
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it was almost impossible to spot a puma.
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I mean you can see it on the top of the hill
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and they run away.
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So later I came back every year,
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and the pumas started coming more habituated to people.
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This is partly to do with an increase in tourism,
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but also because of the persistence
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of a few filmmakers such as Christian.
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However, if you want to film wild big cat behavior,
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it's also important that they prey animals
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are relaxed around humans too.
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This isn't like filming in Africa,
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where people on foot would scatter the wildlife.
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Here, the only thing that upsets guanaco are pumas.
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When I arrived, I had no idea quite how
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extraordinary this place was.
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I was amazed that having spent months
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waiting for pumas in other parts of the world,
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how tolerant these cats were.
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What I didn't realize is that they had
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a whole lot more tolerance in store for all of us.
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The mother puma has the same job
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as any mother with cubs,
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teaching her children to hunt.
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Which mostly involves letting them make their own mistakes.
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In this open country, a herd is no good.
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They're far too aware.
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They need a straggler to practice on.
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Their mother leads the way.
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Without cover, stealth is essential.
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She knows how to stay unseen,
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while closing the gap between herself and the guanaco.
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The cubs are keen students and try to
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copy their mother by creeping after her.
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They're making all the right moves,
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but have yet to realize they're supposed to be invisible.
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The cubs seem surprised.
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The guanacos distinctive alarm call warns others nearby.
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To the casual observer this may look like a failed hunt,
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but in truth, it was a valuable lesson for the cubs,
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on the importance of stealth.
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They'll need at least another year
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before they're skilled enough to get
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anywhere near a guanaco.
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The stragglers find their way back to the herd.
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Pumas evolved to stalk deer through
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forests with lots of cover.
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But on these open grasslands, they're tested to the limit.
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Guanacos have long necks and sharp eyes.
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But at night, their vision is less useful.
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As darkness falls, the guanacos always
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move to a new location.
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I wondered whether the pumas tended to
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do most of their hunting at night.
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With ultra sensitive night cameras,
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we have a chance to see what happens.
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Like deer and antelope in other parts of the world,
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the guanacos often gather in open places.
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And, as it gets darker, they all sit down for the night.
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They stay still and completely silent.
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Presumably, this makes it harder for predators to find them.
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The puma needs to find a herd before it's too dark.
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Despite her superb night vision,
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the guanacos can be very hard to see,
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unless they're moving.
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It is a real game of cat and mouse.
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The guanacos' main plan is to basically
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sit down somewhere very quietly and don't move all night,
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which makes them extremely hard for the pumas to find.
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To help us see what's going on,
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we also have infra red and thermal cameras.
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Even though the hazy moon barely illuminates the ground,
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she moves with ease,
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and merges perfectly with the background.
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Until she reveals herself against the sky.
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But now she knows where they are,
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and she can hear where they're going.
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Towards a great collection of nervous guanacos by a lake.
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Once the moon is completely covered by clouds,
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the puma has the upper hand.
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In the darkness, the guanacos are too scared to run far,
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and she can take her time.
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At double her weight, this guanaco is far more
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than she can eat in one sitting.
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But she does intend to keep the prize all to herself,
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so when she's had enough she attempts
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to conceal it from scavengers.
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And there are plenty about.
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If the condors spot it they would finish it in 20 minutes.
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We found a female that had killed a guanaco.
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She ate a little of the guanaco.
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She moved to a rock close by to her.
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She slept there for a few hours.
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And suddenly, next to us, we saw another puma,
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just walking behind the little hill.
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What happened now was very intense.
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I start filming, start filming, it was Matt there.
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And actually I noticed there was a puma
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we've known since she was a cub.
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She's very calm, she loves people.
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So she started walking, walking close to us,
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and behind her came a male.
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She was with a male, with a boyfriend.
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And the male also does the same thing.
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He was a huge male, a very big animal.
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The new female helps herself to the kill,
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while the male takes a backseat.
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The hunter is not happy.
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She comes to investigate the intruders,
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both of them older and more experienced than herself.
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The hunter skirts around the edge of her guanaco.
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Her slow submissive movements allow
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the visiting female to feed undisturbed.
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A blink and a look away demonstrate
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the hunter has no aggressive intentions.
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The hunter waits.
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The male does nothing, yet at twice the weight
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of the females he has the power to drive them both off.
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Pumas have always been thought of as solitary,
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but rare images like these suggest we have much to learn.
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Perhaps they know each other, or they're related.
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A few hundred meters away there are more pumas.
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A mother and her three almost full grown cubs
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are taking a keen interest.
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Later, I don't know how many minutes,
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it was so, so intense, the moment.
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I mean everything happened so fast.
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We saw the mother with the three cubs
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just coming into the place again.
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And they just walked faster.
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They check the camera trap
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before we've even had time to set it up.
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These cats are taking the idea of
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being comfortable with people a bit further
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than any of us were expecting.
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As a filmmaker you're always trying to
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create a sense of being there to the viewer,
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but with wild big cats it's very rare
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to actually be there yourself.
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When they get to the kill they start to just kind of,
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not fight with our female, five year old female.
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We call her the sister.
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And something like telling her just give me space,
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I mean I want to eat and I don't want you close.
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So they started just making some faces
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and noises to frighten them then,
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until the male just gets up.
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The mother is concerned for her cubs.
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He started walking into the mess around the kill,
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and he just put a knot on everything.
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He just tells the other cats in his way, just stop,
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so this is my kill.
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So everyone stops.
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The curious cub stands his ground.
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The male could easily kill them,
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yet withholds his full power.
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Perhaps the cubs are his.
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To make his point clear, he scent marks the ground.
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And then, let's the family feed.
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Kind of seen this scene in Africa,
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you'll see lions eating an antelope or something.
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This is the cat that made the kill.
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Christian didn't know where she was from,
275
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and her relationship with the other cats
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was a bit more strained.
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Outnumbered, all she could do was make friends.
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Perhaps she was trying to make friends with us.
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I was hoping for intimate images,
280
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I wasn't expecting it to be quite this intimate.
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But the hunter still can't get to her own kill.
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The smallest cub feels bold enough to have a go at her.
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The hunter doesn't retaliate,
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00:25:13,039 --> 00:25:16,591
she just gives the cub a clout to show that she could.
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Eventually, the hunter picks her moment,
286
00:25:29,335 --> 00:25:30,918
and she is allowed to feed.
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00:25:34,392 --> 00:25:37,175
Now there are seven pumas around the guanaco.
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00:25:38,520 --> 00:25:40,450
The cubs could be related to the male,
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but even then, this is unusual behavior.
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00:25:44,165 --> 00:25:47,284
And the other two females could well be complete strangers.
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Events like this have rarely been captured on film,
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and give us a dramatically different view
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of the cat we always thought of as a solitary hunter.
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Is this new behavior?
295
00:26:13,656 --> 00:26:16,829
Or are pumas just returning to the way they once lived?
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00:26:27,075 --> 00:26:28,605
A few hundred years ago there were
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00:26:28,671 --> 00:26:31,907
30 million guanacos on these plains.
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00:26:32,045 --> 00:26:34,909
And early European colonists described
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00:26:35,031 --> 00:26:37,374
prides of pumas feasting on kills.
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00:26:38,899 --> 00:26:41,849
Before they hunted out the guanacos herds,
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00:26:41,976 --> 00:26:43,129
the puma's prey.
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00:26:50,588 --> 00:26:53,028
Like the pumas in the north, they waste nothing
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00:26:53,131 --> 00:26:55,594
and spend a couple of days finishing the kill,
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00:26:56,624 --> 00:26:59,867
leaving us all amazed at the trust they show us.
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00:27:16,100 --> 00:27:19,153
I love the way they reframe the camera trap shot
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00:27:19,284 --> 00:27:22,304
to get us closer still to this normally elusive cat.
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00:27:50,079 --> 00:27:53,671
After decades of protection, in some places puma numbers
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00:27:53,823 --> 00:27:56,643
have risen to almost one cat per square mile
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in Torres Del Paine.
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00:28:04,209 --> 00:28:08,231
This is off the scale in terms of modern big cat density.
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00:28:10,411 --> 00:28:13,364
But it could be closer to that of pre-colonial times.
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00:28:19,701 --> 00:28:23,311
Torres Del Paine has now become a crucial refuge.
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00:28:23,466 --> 00:28:26,086
From here, some young pumas follow their prey
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00:28:26,197 --> 00:28:28,810
onto farmland and beyond.
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00:28:41,024 --> 00:28:43,904
Genetics have shown that 10,000 years ago,
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00:28:44,027 --> 00:28:46,180
pumas almost became extinct,
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00:28:48,917 --> 00:28:52,289
and survived in a refuge somewhere in northeastern Brazil,
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00:28:56,496 --> 00:29:00,430
before they were able to re-invade their old haunts again.
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00:29:05,067 --> 00:29:07,147
Even though the last few centuries have seen
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00:29:07,236 --> 00:29:10,349
the pumas range in population shrink dramatically again,
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00:29:13,888 --> 00:29:17,568
there are still thought to be about 50,000 pumas surviving
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00:29:18,612 --> 00:29:20,695
in almost every kind of habitat,
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00:29:22,177 --> 00:29:23,990
including frozen mountains,
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00:29:25,398 --> 00:29:26,231
deserts,
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00:29:28,141 --> 00:29:29,284
rainforests,
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00:29:32,604 --> 00:29:33,767
and human habitats,
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00:29:36,889 --> 00:29:37,732
like farmland.
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00:29:42,457 --> 00:29:44,677
After their Ice Age near extinction,
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we're lucky we still have pumas at all.
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00:29:49,728 --> 00:29:53,243
Perhaps with tolerance, and the help of places
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00:29:53,393 --> 00:29:54,493
like Torres Del Paine,
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00:29:56,522 --> 00:29:58,622
the adaptable puma has a better chance
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00:29:58,711 --> 00:30:01,211
through the next difficult century
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00:30:01,318 --> 00:30:02,931
than some of the other big cats.
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