I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “it’s hunt or be hunted” used before, but have you ever seen an real-life example of an animal hunting and being hunted at the same time?
That’s exactly what was going down in this video out of Southern California, which shows a coyote on the prowl that’s too wrapped up in its own hunt to notice that a mountain lion was tailing closely behind. The footage that you’ll see was actually captured in a canyon of the Santa Ana Mountains called Black Star Canyon.
A trail camera owned by a man named Jason Andes captured the whole entire story as it unfolded. It first showed the coyote trotting by the camera with its nose close to the ground, possibly tracking some prey that had run through the area.
After stopping for a moment, it continues to run along, and after 12 minutes go by, a mountain lion can be seen walking along the exact same trail.
It’s possible that the big cat was also following along whatever the coyote was chasing after, but as you’ll see in the video below, the mountain lion was probably tracking the coyote the whole time.
How do we know that? Well, when the coyote and the mountain lion both make their second appearance on the trail camera, one of them is very much alive, and the other is very much dead. Around 20 minutes after the mountain lion walked through, it returned on the exact same trail holding the deceased coyote in its mouth.
Just goes to show you that animals have to keep their head on a swivel out in the wild, and if they don’t, they can become someone else’s dinner while they themselves were trying to track down a meal.
The video was posted to YouTube and had the caption:
“This coyote met his fate after a mountain lion was close behind. Mountain lions kill and eat coyotes on a pretty regular basis.
Mule deer are their main prey, but coyotes are not far behind. This is nature and a great look at how prey and predator have interactions.”
