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• Researchers theorize cougars are inhabiting the Midwest again following a "stepping stone" dispersal pattern -- moving out of a dense population, stopping at the closest patch of available habitat and examining it for mates and prey before moving on. One male cougar made its way as far as Connecticut, where it was hit and killed by a vehicle.
• Such cougar dispersal "is what they're programmed to do. Young mammals, even young humans, tend to move away from home," said Paul Beier, a Northern Arizona University conservation biology professor who studies cougars. "They once occupied the midwestern U.S. There's still some appropriate habitat, and this is how they'll find it."
• Cougars are known to be largely secretive and mostly keep to riverbanks and

wooded areas, usually avoiding humans while feeding on deer, turkeys and raccoons.
• But at times, the predators have drifted into populated areas. Police in Santa Monica, Calif., last month killed a 95-pound mountain lion that roamed into a downtown area -- the first such sighting in that city in more than three decades -- and Chicago police in 2008 shot and killed a 150-pound cougar in an alley on the city's North Side.
• The study's findings come as little

(Continued on page 16)