There’s a sneaky mountain lion in this photo — looking right at you. Can you find it?
Nevada’s mountain lions can reach 180 pounds, so it seems impossible you wouldn’t see one coming.
Then again, maybe not.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service posted a photo on Facebook taken in Washoe County, Nevada, and asked: ”Can you spy the big cat?”
A mountain lion is nowhere to be seen, at least not without close — very close — inspection.
The photo shows a series of boulders on a slope, and nothing but the grass appears alive.
Hundreds have reacted to the challenge, including some who realized a bit too late that the mountain lion is sitting there “looking at you” in the photo.
“Hiding in plain sight,” one woman noted.
“I would probably have walked past it,” another commented.
“I had to magnify to fullscreen to locate this kitty-kitty,” one man admitted.
So where is it?
Lower left corner, “lurking in the shadows” of the boulders, one man correctly noted.
The mountain lion is well hidden not just because of the shadows, but also because its fur pattern blends well into the surrounding grasses and weeds.
As for how big it might be, that’s tough to say. The predator “can stand 30 inches at the shoulder and measure up to eight feet in length from nose to tail,” according to the Nevada Department of Wildlife.
They can be dangerous to humans, but that’s most often when they are approached while feeding on a kill, officials say.
“People rarely get more than a brief glimpse of a mountain lion in the wild,” the department reports.
“Lion attacks on people are rare, with fewer than a dozen fatalities in North America in more than 100 years. Most of the attacks were by young lions, perhaps forced out to hunt on their own and not yet living in established areas. Young lions may key on easy prey, like pets and small children,” state wildlife officials say.
This story was originally published January 13, 2021 at 7:16 AM with the headline "There’s a sneaky mountain lion in this photo — looking right at you. Can you find it?."