iStockphoto
Mountain lion next to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco
There’s plenty of wildlife to be found in San Francisco, but you don’t usually have to worry about encountering an animal that typically poses any real danger. However, officials found themselves chasing one through the streets of the city after a resident filmed it prowling through a crowded neighborhood on Friday.
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to refer to San Francisco’s terrain as “mountainous” due to the infamously steep hills you’ll encounter in a city that boasts an elevation change of more than 900 feet between its highest and lowest points.
However, the dense metropolis is not the type of place where you’d expect to cross paths with a mountain lion, which (as the name suggests) prefer to roam the slopes in the untamed wilderness that defines the edges of the Bay Area.
With that said, those animals do manage to find their way into San Francisco every now and then, including one that made an appearance in a neighborhood a few blocks away from the Pacific Ocean on Friday.
Officials in San Francisco captured a mountain lion that was spotted in the Sunset District
The southern border of San Francisco is situated around five miles away from the northern foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, which are home to a relatively tiny population of mountain lions (experts believe they number around 50 or 60).
Sightings in the city tend to be pretty few and far between, although one that weighed a little more than 75 pounds managed to cause a stir earlier this year after multiple people captured footage of it in the Pacific Heights area.
On Friday, we were treated to another one when someone who lives near the corner of 44th Avenue and Ulloa Street in the Outer Sunset neighborhood filmed what appeared to be an adolescent mountain lion slinking beneath the window of the home from where it was spotted.
New video from a neighbor of the mountain lion in the area of 44th and Ulloa in SF. pic.twitter.com/kKG50H7xZn
— Christien Kafton (@CKaftonKTVU) September 18, 2026
A surprise visitor for people living in the Sunset in San Francisco. Animal Care & Control is at Ulloa and 44th for a mountain lion sighting! pic.twitter.com/IvSVu89DWe
— Mike DeWald (@mike_dewald) September 18, 2026
According to ABC7, San Francisco Animal Care and Control was dispatched to the scene after receiving a call about the animal around 7:30 A.M. local time, and a bystander filmed it running through the streets as they attempted to tranquilize it.
The mountain lion makes a break for it as officials work to tranquilize it. pic.twitter.com/0rtz9qzTXM
— Mike DeWald (@mike_dewald) September 18, 2026
#BREAKING A mountain lion spotted in San Francisco’s Sunset District near 44th & Ulloa has been safely captured by Animal Care & Control officers and SFPD. Authorities are on scene. @nbcbayarea pic.twitter.com/yFg4CBdCg0
— John Zuchelli (@tvzuke) September 18, 2026
Officials from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife were also tapped to assist, and the mountain lion was successfully captured without causing any harm to residents or responders.
There’s no way to know how the animal ended up there in the first place, although the street where things went down is located a short walk from a beach that stretches down the western coast of the city and leads to the less developed areas it likely originated from.