Mountain Lion

LA’s Mountain Lions May Face Extinction—But There’s a Way to Save Them

Cougars have called California home long before humans have. In Los Angeles, however, urbanization and human activity are driving nearby mountain populations toward possible extinction, according to a new study. Published in the journal Ecological Applications Wednesday, the study uses 15 years’ worth of data, along with modeling and DNA analyses, to sound an alarm…

Beloved LA-Area Mountain Lion Presumed Dead From Woolsey Fire 

The Woolsey Fire burned through southern California for nearly three weeks, torching nearly 100,000 acres and destroying 1,500 structures in its path. It’s finally contained since last week, but officials are just beginning to survey the damage. Part of that includes cataloging the region’s wildlife. Unfortunately, one beloved young mountain lion, P-74, is believed dead…

Hungry Mountain Lion Mauls Deer on a Family’s Porch

Don’t fuck with a mountain lion. Sadly, a small deer in Southern San Francisco learned that lesson the hard way when its neck was snapped on a family’s porch. The whole thing was documented on a Nest Cam that was set up to capture any unwanted activity outside the home. In the video, which has…

How P-22 Became Hollywood’s Most Famous Mountain Lion

A mountain lion named P-22 is making headlines today for being discovered inside—and eventually escaping from—a Los Angeles basement. In this excerpt from his new book about the urban wilderness, Tristan Donovan gives us the origin story of P-22. The discovery of P-22, the mountain lion that lives in Griffith Park, was pure fluke. The…

Basement Lion Is What Makes LA Great

Hollywood’s very own mountain lion is trapped in a basement right now. It’s a bizarre wildlife vs urbanization conflict, but it’s also indicative of what makes this city so special: its nature. I was on the phone with a colleague the other day when it came up that she’d never visited Los Angeles. She lives…

My Dog Treed A Mountain Lion

My dog treed a cat last week a few miles from my house in Los Angeles. No firemen were needed to get it down. The cat weighed 100 pounds. Setting the scene: I own a Karelian Bear Dog. These dogs are bred to hunt bears, moose, and other large game. Sansho is intense, determined, unbelievably…

A Bobcat Plays With Its Food

Who said you can’t play with your cake and eat it too? The cake, in this case, is probably a dusky-footed woodrat. The Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a field station affiliated with Stanford University, outfitted with dozens of camera traps. One trap recently caught a bobcat playing with its unfortunate next meal. [via @JRWildlife]

Los Angeles’s Celebrity Mountain Lion is Recovering from Rat Poison

Last month we brought you the story of how P-22, the resident mountain lion mascot in LA’s Griffith Park, was treated for a severe case of mange brought about by the ingestion of rat poison. New camera trap photos show he’s recovering well. https://gizmodo.com/stop-using-rat-poison-its-killing-wildlife-1564538434 Miguel Ordeñana, a Natural History Museum and Griffith Park Connectivity Study…

Stop Using Rat Poison, It’s Killing Wildlife

The mountain lion mascot of Los Angeles, Griffith Park’s P-22, is sick. And it’s all our fault. The story of P-22 is one of super-feline proportions. The cat managed, somehow, to move safely across two different eight-lane highways, a maneuver that ended in a far more grisly manner for three of his counterparts. He managed…

Apple just released OS X 10.8.5. It fixes a few bugs in Mail and makes Wi-Fi file transfers speedier. You can get it in the App Store now. [9to5Mac]

Apple’s Latest OS X Update Fixes More Messages Bugs

Apple today released OS X 10.8.4, an update to Mountain Lion that (again) addresses some issues with Messages, as well as some miscellaneous bugs. Apparently, there was an iMessage quirk that was causing some messages to show up out of order on the desktop app. Also included in the update is a new version of…

OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3 is out with Boot Camp support for Windows 8, iTunes gift card scanning and more.

This Text String Crashes Almost Any App on a Mac Running Mountain Lion

Here’s a weird little OS X quirk: the eight-character code above seems to cause pretty much any app on a Mac running Mountain Lion to crash, instantly. It’s not clear why, but tapping in the code seems to cause most apps running on Mountain Lion to crash, losing any open files in the process. Interestingly,…

Rumor: OS X 10.9 Will Get Siri and Apple Maps Integration

Apple is reportedly testing Siri and Apple Maps integration for the next-gen version of its operating system, OS X 10.9. It makes perfect sense that they’d test two marquee (if controversial) features on the desktop. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be in the final product. Mountain Lion, of course, already has dictation. Rolling Siri into…

Using Growl on Mountain Lion Just Got Way Less Annoying

An update to Growl will make notifications start playing nice with Mountain Lion. Growl version 2.0 is now integrated with the ML Notification Center. Up until now, it’s been a huge pain in the ass to use Growl with the latest version of OS X—notification and Growl banner alerts would show up in the same…

How to Run Mac OS X Inside Windows Using VirtualBox

Even if you’re a Windows fan, you’ve probably thought about trying OS X. Maybe you’d like to test drive OS X before switching to a Mac or building a Hackintosh, or maybe you just want to run that one killer OS X app on your Windows machine. Whatever your reason, you can actually install and…

You Can Grab Apple’s First Mountain Lion Update Right Now (Updated)

Has updating your computer to Mac OS X Lion completely killed your battery life? Today Apple has released the first major update (10.8.1), and it’s rumored to fix that problem for you. Here’s the full list of what it includes: Resolve an issue that may cause Migration Assistant to unexpectedly quit Improve compatibility when connecting…

How to Get the Classic Mac Sounds Back Into OS X Mountain Lion

This morning I had a bad case of nostalgia. I listened to the classic “Quack” Macintosh system alert sound in a YouTube video and I thought about the good old days, when computing felt magical and smelled of new. https://gizmodo.com/what-to-do-with-an-original-1984-macintosh-5269088 Of course, there was no Quack in the Sound preferences pane. Apple got rid of…

Why Your Old Mac Can’t Use Mountain Lion AirPlay Mirroring

AirPlay mirroring is one of the sweet new features that arrives on your Mac with OS X Mountain Lion—as long as you have a newer computer. But if you’ve got a pre-2011 Mac, it’s not going to work. Cult of Mac explains that it’s a hardware problem and not a conspiracy. https://gizmodo.com/os-x-mountain-lion-all-the-good-stuff-5928962 You need a…

Apple’s Power Nap Is Now Available as a Firmware Update

Apple’s Power Nap, which allows Macs to pull down email, calendar changes, software updates and whatever else from the internet while in standby, is now available as a firmware update for those running Mountain Lion. https://gizmodo.com/power-nap-for-apple-syncs-your-computer-while-it-slee-5917455 9to5mac reports that the firmware allows those running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion to take advantage of the feature.…