‘Curious’ cougar and her ‘shy’ brother get second chance at NC zoo. See the cute cubs
A “curious” cougar cub and her “shy” brother are getting a second chance at life in a North Carolina zoo.
Photos show adorable siblings Hayla and Noa as they adjust to their new home in the mountain town of Asheville. The two are kicking off their next chapter after they were found orphaned roughly 2,500 miles away near White Salmon, Washington.
“Since cougar cubs stay with their mother for up to two years learning to hunt and survive, these cubs never learned critical survival skills or proper fear of humans,” the Western North Carolina Nature Center wrote March 27 in a Facebook post.
The cubs, now about 8 months old, needed a home after they were found in late 2023. Though the zoo said it doesn’t know exactly what happened to their mom, the babies made it to the North Carolina zoo and were named after rivers that flow through the state’s mountains.
“Hayla (named for the Nantahala River) and Noa (named for the Swannanoa River) are still acclimating to their space and may not always be visible,” the zoo wrote. “But be on the lookout for them in their new habitat next to the bobcats.”
Hayla weighs about 55 pounds, while her brother is 65 pounds. As the two continue to grow, the zoo has noticed some early differences between the two.
“We are still getting to know their personalities,” the wildlife park told McClatchy News in an April 2 email. “They interact a lot with their daily enrichment. Hayla, the female cub, is a little more curious and her brother Noa is more shy.”
Cougars — also called mountain lions, panthers and pumas — are predators that live in the wild in the western United States as well as Florida. The animals are “swift runners, agile climbers, and great swimmers with agile bodies,” the zoo wrote on its website.
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