3 cougar kittens, mother captured on trail camera video in northern Minnesota

Video captured in the woods near Minnesota's Voyageurs National Park shows the first documented evidence of cougar reproduction in the state in more than a century. 

In the trail camera footage, which was captured on March 25, the cougars feed on a deer carcass. They growl and hiss at each other, and at times they also purr, groom and lay next to each other.

"Looking at the footage was and still is surreal. We never anticipated seeing four cougars together in northern Minnesota," said Thomas Gable, project lead of the Voyageurs Wolf Project.

The organization has set up hundreds of trail cameras in northeast Minnesota to support their wolf research. But they've also captured footage of eight lone cougars wandering the woods since 2023. 

Researchers set up the camera near the dear carcass because they believed a bobcat had killed it. But instead, the cougars returned to the carcass four hours later and spent roughly seven hours in front of the cameras.

Scientists with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources believe the kittens that appear in the video are between 7 and 9 months old.

Cougars were native to Minnesota but there hasn't been evidence of a sustained, breeding population in 100 years, the DNR says. The cougars that make their way through Minnesota are believed to be lone wanderers from the Dakotas and Nebraska.

"Although this is an important starting point for potential population establishment in Minnesota, predicting the future is extremely difficult," said John Erb, a research biologist with the DNR. 

He added that the kittens may not survive. They could be killed by wolves, a male cougar or even a car. 

"They may also become part of the founding catalyst for a slow but steady increase in numbers," he said. "Time will tell, but we are clearly nearing a point where the probability of a self-sustaining population has increased."