THIS puma is used to the cold. It lives in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, where it rains and snows year-round, with winds from Antarctica reaching speeds of up to 150 kilometres per hour.
The park spans more than 180,000 hectares of Patagonia, at the southern tip of South America, with sweeping landscapes of mountains, glaciers and lakes. German photographer Ingo Arndt took the shot during a snowstorm. He won third prize at the 2019 World Press Photo Contest, in the Nature Stories category. You can see his winning photo below.
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Over seven trips to the park, Arndt tracked these big cats (Puma concolor) for more than seven months in total, photographing mating and hunting – behaviours that have rarely been seen by humans.
Pumas have the widest distribution of any land mammal in the Americas, once being found from Alaska in the north to Patagonia in the south, and from coast to coast in North America. But habitat destruction and hunting have dwindled their numbers.
Torres del Paine National Park is thought to contain higher concentrations of pumas than anywhere else in the world, thanks in part to the abundance of prey. Pumas in the park primarily hunt guanaco (Lama guanicoe), a close relative of the llama, which have similar long necks but tawny fur.
Pumas are solitary unless rearing cubs, and can establish home territories spanning hundreds of square kilometres, making them hard to track. “They never use the same places for resting or hiding,” says Arndt. The most challenging days involved waiting for 6 to 8 hours in the cold and wind to capture a shot. The payoff, though, is worth it. “For me, they are the most beautiful cats,” he says.
Photographer
Ingo Arndt
