WMRA Special Features

Schrödinger's Cougar

WMRA | By Brent Finnegan

Published June 11, 2015 at 11:22 AM EDT

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John Audubon's c. 1845 illustration of a mountain lion.

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Larry Carpenter in the woods near Hone Quarry, where he says he saw two mountain lions nearly 40 years ago.

Andrew Jenner

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A bobcat photographed in Shenandoah National Park, as part of a camera trapping program run by Dr. Bill McShea of the Smithsonian Institution. The project has collected several million images of wild animals in the region - but not one mountain lion.

eMammal Project at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

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A bear and cub in Shenandoah National Park, also photographed by an automated camera as part of McShea's program.

eMammal Project at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

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Dr. Bill McShea's camera trapping program has documented animals not previously thought to be present in the region. This fisher - a member of the weasel family - was photographed at Cunningham Falls State Park in Maryland.

eMammal Project at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

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Dr. Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) was an Austrian physicist who helped develop quantum theory - and the well-known thought experiment, Schrödinger's Cat.";

The Eastern cougar (or mountain lion) is considered by most wildlife experts to have been extinct in Virginia for a long time. But lots of people swear they’ve seen one.

Have they? What did they really see? And what does the gap between reported sightings, and the science, say about what we know about the world?

In this special feature, WMRA’s Andrew Jenner and Brent Finnegan take us deep into Virginia’s back country, and into a mind-bending discussion of perceived reality, all generated by an animal that may, or may not, exist.

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