84 Mountain Lions of the Black Hills
stores also allowed us to quantify our visual estimates of fat levels, because we had
both ranked fat stores as low, medium, or high and had weighed fat and kidneys to
estimate Riney and total kidney fat indices ( table 6.2).
Our ranks for fat accumulation based on visual observations differed significantly
from one another relative to total kidney fat; average TKFI percentages were 40.30%
(±15.88%, n = 11) for low, 132.45% (±11.23%, n = 22) for medium, and 215.89%
(±17. 5 6% , n = 9) for high (P < 0.0 01) ( table 6.2). Based on this analy sis, we used values
for TKFI when further analyzing fat levels of mountain lions relative to temporal
trends.
Dispersing males and injured lions that no longer could capture and kill prey would
generally have low fat levels; both RKFI and TKFI would be close to 0%. In contrast,
pregnant females and prime- age adult males had high levels of fat (commonly surpass-
ing 200% TKFI). Estimates for TKFI were variable across ages of mountain lions
(fig. 6.6), with levels low for young lions; fat levels generally peaked at 1–3 years of
age. Above age 1, TKFI percentages declined (P = 0.02) with age for males but not
(P = 0.36) for females. Estimates of TKFI were more variable for lions older than
figure 6.4. Abdominal fat in a mountain lion. This lion’s fat level was visually ranked as
moderate to high, because there was a vast amount of mesentery fat, but the kidneys
were vis i ble (not completely covered with fat). Photo by D. Fecske.