Adaptive social strategies in a solitary carnivore

Using GPS telemetry and field observation, Elbroch and colleagues documented that pumas, long considered strictly solitary, engage in structured social interactions, including tolerated food sharing at kills built around networks of reciprocity. By tracking many individuals and visiting kill sites, they showed that lions allowed certain neighbors to feed at their carcasses, with the favor reciprocated over time, revealing a hidden social fabric mediated by a territorial land-tenure system. The study reframed mountain lion society as more complex than the textbook image of solitary hermits. It exemplifies how dense movement data combined with kill-site analysis can overturn long-held behavioral assumptions, showing that even classic solitary carnivores maintain consequential, repeatable relationships with their neighbors.