Honey, I Don't Want You To Meet The Neighbors

16 June 2004 - 6:00am

Sprawl invades big animal habitats -- mountain lions turn up in Palo Alto yards.

"Nothing strikes fear in Silicon Valley these days like the threat of curbing stock options or losing high-tech jobs overseas. Except maybe mountain lions.That's right -- the stealthy predators are on many people's minds since a police confrontation with a young lion in a residential neighborhood here in May and several purported sightings of the big cats in recent days. Worry about the safety of children and pets seems to be eclipsed only by outrage at the police decision to shoot the 2-year-old male lion after a black Labrador treed it in Linda Frommer's front yard."

Source: USA Today, June 14, 2004
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All of that only scratches the surface of what's wrong with this study. The idea that complex urban development patterns and human behavior can be meaningfully studied according to one primary criteria — density — is wrong from the start.