Incredibly Rare Wandering Cougar Caught on Video

Footage has captured an incredibly rare Minnesota cougar wandering in the wilderness.

The video was captured by the Voyageurs Wolf Project, a research group that tracks wolves roaming the Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota.

To study the wolves, the group sets up camera traps in remote areas of the Greater Voyageurs ecosystem.

"The cameras that we set-up to get footage of wolves do pick up footage of relatively cryptic or less common wildlife in our area from time to time," Voyageurs Wolf Project lead Thomas Gable told Newsweek. "A few examples of less common cryptic species in our area are Canada lynx and badgers. However, we have accumulated quite a bit of footage of both of these species over the past few years given the number of cameras we have spread around our study area."

The footage shows a clear image of the cougar stalking across an area of the national park.

There have only been 59 confirmed cougar sightings in Minnesota since 2004. None of these sightings have ever been made in this area of the state.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said the cougar—sometimes referred to as pumas or mountain lions—used to be widespread across Minnesota before Europeans settlements, but they were never abundant.

Nowadays they are rarely ever seen in the state but there is evidence that their numbers may be increasing.

Those that are spotted in the state are thought to be transient young males that have traveled from breeding populations in the western Dakotas.

Sometimes cougar sightings in Minnesota are a case of mistaken identity, as the state is also home to bobcats, coyotes wolves and other large animals.

But the image from the Voyageurs Wolf Project is "super clear," meaning there is "no disputing what kind of kitty this is," the project said on a Facebook post.

Voyageurs National Park has a population of between 30 and 50 wolves, divided into six to nine packs. This has remained relatively unchanged since the 1990s.

"The presence of this cougar almost certainly will have no impact on the wolves in anyway. All evidence suggests this is just a solitary individual that was passing through our area. For all we know, the cougar could already be hundreds of miles away by now! There is no evidence to indicate it is a resident animal as we did not get the animal on any other trail cameras in the area before or after this observation," Gable said.

It is not the first surprising discovery to be made by the Voyageurs Wolf Project.

In October, the project revealed they had found a wolf that appeared to be growing an extra tooth—something the project, and experienced wolf biologists, had never seen before.

The project's trail cameras have also captured some strange behaviors displayed by the wolves.

In April, the project found footage of a wolf carrying a dead pup that was still in the amniotic sac. This baffled wildlife experts at the time, who had never seen this behavior before.