stylistic:tone, stylistic:style_transfer, information:extraction
In South America

Cougars in the southern cone of South America are reputed to be extremely reluctant to attack people; in legend, they defended people against jaguars. The nineteenth-century naturalists Félix de Azara and William Henry Hudson thought that attacks on people, even children or sleeping adults, did not happen. Hudson, citing anecdotal evidence from hunters, claimed that pumas were positively inhibited from attacking people, even in self-defense. Attacks on humans, although exceedingly rare, have occurred.

An early, authenticated, non-fatal case occurred near Lake Viedma, Patagonia, in 1877 when a female mauled the Argentine scientist Francisco P. Moreno; Moreno afterward showed the scars to Theodore Roosevelt. In this instance, however, Moreno had been wearing a guanaco -hide poncho round his neck and head as protection against the cold; in Patagonia the guanaco is the puma's chief prey animal. Another authenticated case occurred in 1997 in Iguazú National Park in northeastern Argentina, when the 20-month-old son of a ranger was killed by a female puma. Forensic analysis found specimens of the child's hair and clothing fibers in the animal's stomach. The coatí is the puma's chief prey in this area. Despite prohibitory signs, coatis are hand-fed by tourists in the park, causing unnatural approximation between cougars and humans. This particular puma had been raised in captivity and released into the wild. On March 13, 2012, Erica Cruz, a 23-year-old shepherdess was found dead in a mountainous area near Rosario de Lerma, Salta Province, in northwestern Argentina. Claw incisions, which severed a jugular vein, indicated that the attacker was a felid; differential diagnosis ruled out other possible perpetrators. There were no bite marks on the victim, who had been herding goats. In 2019 in Córdoba Province, Argentina an elderly man was badly injured by a cougar after he attempted to defend his dog from it, while in neighboring Chile a 28-year-old woman was attacked and killed in Corral, in Los Ríos Region, on October 20, 2020.

Fatal attacks by other carnivores, such as feral dogs, can be misattributed to cougars without appropriate forensic knowledge.