20 April 2019 | NewScientist | 27Cool cat
THIS puma is used to the cold. It lives in Chile’s
Torres del Paine National Park, where it rains and
snows year-round, with winds from Antarctica
reaching speeds of up to 150 kilometres per hour.
The park spans more than 180,000 hectares of
Patagonia, at the southern tip of South America,
with sweeping landscapes of mountains, glaciers
and lakes. German photographer Ingo Arndt
(pictured below) took the shot during a
snowstorm. He won third prize at the 2019 World
Press Photo Contest, in the Nature Stories
category.You can see his winning photo on the
following page.
Over seven trips to the park, Arndt tracked
these big cats (Puma concolor) for more than
seven months in total, photographing mating
and hunting – behaviours that have rarely
been seen by humans.
Pumas have the widest distribution of any
land mammal in the Americas, once being found
from Alaska in the north to Patagonia in the
south, and from coast to coast in North America.
But habitat destruction and hunting have
dwindled their numbers.
Torres del Paine National Park is thought to
contain higher concentrations of pumas than
anywhere else in the world, thanks in part to the
abundance of prey. Pumas in the park primarily
hunt guanaco (Lama guanicoe), a close relative
of the llama, which have similar long necks but
tawny fur.
Pumas are solitary unless rearing cubs, and
can establish home territories spanning hundreds
of square kilometres, making them hard to track.
“They never use the same places for resting or
hiding,” says Arndt. The most challenging days
involved waiting for 6 to 8 hours in the cold and
wind to capture a shot. The payoff, though, is
worth it. “For me, they are the most beautiful
cats,” he says. Donna Lu
Photographer
Ingo Arndt
ingoarndt.com