7. Running Lions
How would you go about trying to find out a mountain lion’s oxygen consumption and energy use? Why throw them on a treadmill, of course? As ridiculous as that sounds, that is precisely what the National Science Foundation did when they gave a staggering $856,000 grant to the University of California-Santa Cruz to do just that.
They studied three captive cougars to compare with data gathered by special collars on mountain lions in the wild to learn more about the power behind the cat’s pounce and other hunting behavior. One slight problem with this methodology, it only took the big cats eight months to be ‘comfortable’ on the treadmill. Money well spent then.
