A new study published in December 2025 in the journal "Proceedings of the Royal Society B" documented a significant shift in puma behavior in Argentina.
After decades of hunting by local ranchers, pumas were pushed out of their territory. To bring them back, conservationists established Monte León National Park. Instead of feasting on sheep, pumas began hunting a new prey: the Magellanic penguin.
With a new predator, Magellanic penguins were forced to reorganize their seasonal arrival around how pumas hunted and interacted with the park.
Emiliano Donadio, the science director at the Fundación Rewilding Argentina and the study's co-author, told National Geographic, "When we start to rewild the land, the species that are coming back might find a system that is…different from the one that they used to inhabit 100 years ago — and they adapt."
University of California, Berkeley ecologist and study lead author Mitchell Serota didn't intend for this subject to be the core of the work. Instead, the researchers were initially in Argentina to study how wildlife responded after human pressure was removed.
"The penguins weren't the original focus at all," he said.
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Fourteen adult pumas were tracked with GPS collars and monitored by 32 camera traps between 2019 and 2023. Eventually, the researchers noticed that the pumas were frequently eating penguins — more than 40,000 breeding pairs of which nest along the coastline.
The study concluded that the presence of penguins did not attract more pumas, but it did reorganize how the pumas shared the land. Additionally, penguin-eating pumas were more likely to be tolerant of each other's presence.
"We tend to think of pumas as extremely aggressive and intolerant," Donadio told Nat Geo. "But when food is abundant and concentrated, there's no need to defend it."
The penguin colony is still stable, but it is unclear how the puma's behavior may cause a ripple effect. It may also change the population of the guanaco, the puma's traditional prey.
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Definitely 👍 This study shows that installing trail cameras not only helps protect wildlife but also provides researchers with more information about species' actual whereabouts, population sizes, and behaviors. As the world tries to rehabilitate struggling populations, we should expect it not to return to the status quo.
"Restoration doesn't mean going back to some historical snapshot," Serota said. "Species are returning to ecosystems that have changed dramatically. That can create entirely new interactions."
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