EISPIRATEN

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0402 ... 8704.story

There is something about this small Whiting Ranch park that makes lions aggressive. I've walked by the spot where two attacks happened in 2004 and where they trapped another lion in 2012. You can see houses from almost any place in this park. I've seen mule deer in the park, not sure why this area has so many encounters.

Whiting Ranch lion attack tour map:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7sbsgbCjkGQ/U ... -earth.jpg

"This is actually pretty typical behavior in the late afternoon, early morning," Hughan said. "It's hunting for prey, and unfortunately a family happened to be walking by at the wrong place and at the wrong time."

This is typical behavior? Since when? Are lions doing this all the time and I'm just missing all the action?

I found that comment by the ranger inane, typical behavior is not to hunt humans.

My thoughts wander into trying to get some understanding of how these cats behave. I do get concerned when I see the lack of fear of humans which is "abnormal" behavior. The consistency that I do find is it appears that the behavior changes when either a) They look at a human as prey which will happen when you have a child that is of size b) when they have already had a kill i.e the family dog. In these cases they are the predator and the behavior is markedly different then what we normally associate with these normally shy beasts. The danger seems to lie in when that switch is turned on and they either don't see you as a threat or where they are protecting what is theirs. At that point all is fair game and they will not have any fear of humans.

My fear is that as these interaction increase then the next time an encounter happens their wiring is fundamentally changed and they will behave aggressively more often as seems to be happening with the cat near Ontario.