It happened in a split second: One moment Tucker Murphy was alone on a bridge crossing a gorge in Yellowstone National Park in Montana, the next moment he was staring down a puma on the other side. In the winter stillness man and beast considered one another, then the puma turned and melted into the forest.The encounter only lasted a few seconds, but it was one of the highlights of Dr Murphy’s biology career.Dr Murphy, 30, recently spoke as part of Corange Science Week organised by the Bermuda College to encourage more young Bermudians to enter science fields. Dr Murphy was a Bermuda Rhodes Scholar in 2005, and has just completed his doctoral degree at Oxford University in biology and anthropology. For his doctoral thesis he studied territorial conflicts and issues between pumas and humans.“I chose to study pumas for my doctoral thesis because I’d already had experience working with them on two different projects,” said Dr Murphy.In 2000, he worked as a field technician in the Uncompahgre Plateau Puma Study conducted by the Colorado Division of Wildlife in Montrose, Colorado. Part of this project involved tagging litters of puma cubs, and locating and monitoring adult pumas using radio telemetry and by downloading and mapping data from GPS collars. In the winter of 2005, he worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society on the Greater Yellowstone Cougar DNA Project, as a field assistant in Gardiner, Montana. Here he assisted field researchers snow tracking cougars to collect DNA samples.“The animal itself is always so elusive that it is always one step ahead of you,” said Dr Murphy. “I have only come across pumas unexpectedly at three different times. When you see one it is like a shadow fading away. It is almost as though you saw a ghost.”He likened puma research to chasing a myth. A rancher will say one stole a goose the night before, or they saw tracks, but the animal is rarely actually seen.“Pumas live in these very fragmented landscapes,” said Dr Murphy. “Many of the big cats have gone extinct in these fragmented landscapes, but pumas still persist in some areas.”He said this made pumas an ideal organism to answer some biological questions. It also doesn’t hurt that people consider them beautiful creatures, and therefore there are more research dollars available to study them.“They are very charismatic animals and people are interested in them,” said Dr Murphy. “There are many other species that live in the same territory as the puma. If you protect the puma’s territory, a lot of other animals also come under that umbrella.”Pumas can be found all across South America and all the way up the North American West Coast. They have the greatest range of any animal in the Western hemisphere. They are the fourth largest cat adult males can be almost eight feet long from nose to tail tip. There are more than 42 different names for pumas in the English language including mountain lion, catamount and cougar.“That is partly because they were so cryptic and hard to follow that people would run into them and not know what they were,” said Dr Murphy. “Some early settlers thought they were female African lions. Others came up with all these extraordinary names for them.”Historically, pumas were worshipped and revered by some native American tribes. Early settlers also dubbed them the ‘friend of Christians’. Then the views began to change as time passed.“At the moment, in my study people have an ambivalent view of them,” said Dr Murphy. “They were proud that pumas were in their country but they hated having them near their house. They have difficulty living near them. In Chile there has been one recorded attack on people where someone was killed by a puma. In North America, there have been more attacks in the past 100 years particularly on Vancouver Island. But even so your chances of being stung to death by bees or struck by lighting are higher than being killed by a puma.”Dr Murphy grew up in Bermuda and attended Saltus Grammar School before going abroad to finish high school.“I had some good teachers in Bermuda and they got me excited about biology,” he said. “After high school I worked in Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. I was working at a ski centre and learning Spanish. While I was there, someone gave me the travel journals of Charles Darwin, ‘The Voyage of the Beagle’.”Dr Murphy was so inspired by Darwin’s adventures studying wildlife that he decided to continue studying biology and anthropology at Dartmouth in New Hampshire.“I had some wonderful professors,” said Dr Murphy. “I had a professor called Jason Jones who was very charismatic and had some wonderful stories. He encouraged us to study things like army ants and to read a lot of the classics, such as books by Steven J Gould. Then I knew I wanted to continue in academics so I applied for the Rhodes Scholarship.”Dr Murphy is currently working on some short-term research projects, and hopes to eventually get into academics. In addition to his biology career, he is also well known in athletics. In 2010, he represented Bermuda in the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada in skiing. He has also represented Bermuda in other sports such as running.For more information visit: www.wildcru.org and www.temperaterainforests.net.