Scientists are surprised to see that a large number of mountain lions in Nevada are moving towards westward into California. This is something the opposite of what they actually expected.

This study has been carried out by the Wildlife Conservation Society, University of Nevada, Reno and the Nevada Department of Wildlife.

Researchers thought that since a big cat habitat is made available to lions in Nevada when they were killed by hunters, more of their population would migrate from west to east in Nevada to benefit the same. In general, in California, the lions are not hunted but in Nevada they are. So, researchers predicted more of the protective predators to migrate east.

As said by the Jon Beckmann of the Wildlife Conservation Society, "We predicted we would have more lions coming in from California. We were surprised the Sierra [mountain range] itself was a net importer".

After reviewing this trend, the researchers said that one reason that might be attracting mountain lions to California could be the Sierra region because it offers flourishing habitat to them and that too along with a greater variety of prey as compared to that of Nevada's arid mountains.

According to the reports of San Jose Mercury News, in California there lives around 4,000 to 6,000 cougars and in Nevada their population is around 3,000.