Hear mountain lion cubs try their best to hiss and growl at biologists in California

Biologists shared adorable footage they recorded of newborn mountain lion cubs in Southern California’s mountains.

The video shows the kittens’ best efforts to intimidate the intruders with little hisses and growls — which end up sounding more precious than ferocious. One of them even seems to purr in the video.

“We literally want you to turn up the volume — for real!” officials said in a video posted to Instagram Aug. 4. “The vocalizations from these mountain lion kittens are rad.”

National Park Service biologists who study mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains found the kittens in dense scrublands of the Santa Susana Mountains, about 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles, according to the video.

The U.S. Department of the Interior later reposted the video.

“Hello, world! Meet female and male mountain lion kittens P-116 and P-117, born in the Santa Susana Mountains this spring,” officials said in the Aug. 16 post.

The biologists had already been tracking the cubs’ mother, P-106, and found the kittens nestled inside her den when they were about 24 days old, officials said. They were born in May.

It’s the 26th litter of kittens NPS biologists have recorded at that specific den. The biologists visit mountain lion dens when the mother is away hunting, feeding or resting, officials said.

Biologists track mom’s movements, usually via a tracking collar, and others on the team spend less than an hour assessing the cubs’ health, recording body measurements including weight, collecting biological samples and tagging their ears with uniquely numbered and colored tags, officials said. It all happens a short distance from the den, and afterward biologists place the kittens back inside.

The ear tags help identify the specific mountain lions in the future on remote cameras and helps biologists recapture them to fit them with radio collars when they’re older, officials said.

The National Park Service has studied mountain lions in and around the Santa Monica Mountains since 2002 to learn how the big cats “survive in a fragmented and urbanized environment” and to figure out ways to keep the population “healthy and viable.”

And that’s what makes for adorable videos like the one on Instagram. In the comments, most agreed the kittens’ were not as fearsome as they had tried to be.

“Spicy little babies,” someone commented on the video, joking that the hisses are very scary and ferocious.

One commenter compared one kitten’s feeble little roar to the one the Disney character Simba tries in “The Lion King” movie.

“Their little soon to be dangerous baby hisses are precious,” someone else said.

Commenters couldn’t seem to get over the kittens’ attempts to ward off intruders to their den.

“I’m not sure which is better, the purring or the ‘tough guy’ hissing,” another person said.

“Big cat purr in a tiny body,” someone said.

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