The large cat was captured on camera taking a leisurely stroll down Hollyridge Drive on March 5 just before dawn in the Beachwood Canyon. The homeowner who captured the video doesn't want to be identified. He put up the cameras about a year ago to catch suspects breaking into cars - not a puma on the prowl.
"It's kind of scary. I mean, there's a lot of little dogs around, there's a lot of younger people, there's kids. There's a family right across the street," said Nicholas Webster, a Hollywood resident.
As shocked as residents are, Greg Randall, a local wildlife specialist, says it's not that surprising.
"Living in Griffith Park, he's going to be seeing humans more often than they're going to be seeing him, and may not see us as a threat," said Randall.
The neighborhood where the video was taken sits on the edge of Griffith Park's Bronson Canyon, an area a male mountain lion known as P-22 calls home.
Last year, National Geographic captured amazing pictures of the cat in the heart of the nation's largest urban park. It's believed the mountain lion seen in the surveillance video is P-22.
If you look closely at the video, you can see he's wearing a collar just like P-22, who was fitted with a GPS collar in March 2012.
Mountain lions are known to cover miles of territory and with P-22 trapped in the 4,200-acre park by several major freeways, he's left to roam the nearby neighborhoods.
Beachwood Canyon residents say wildlife has become noticeably more comfortable within busy neighborhoods lately.
"Before, the coyotes, you could hear them at night up in the hills when they were hunting for something. Now, it's very, very different. You see them driving around up and down the main streets at all times of the day," said Hollywood resident Emily Clock.
The drought has certainly forced wildlife to expand their normal territories looking for water and prey, but Randall says that is likely not the reason the mountain lion came wandering down.
"He's been sole top predator in Griffith Park for a long time. Actually, there's no real reason to leave because the food source is very stable there," Randall said. "This may be a desire to procreate at this time. They're solitary animals. They usually don't stay with a mate after mating is completed. They move on."
The closest known female mountain lion is in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Wildlife experts say humans and pets are not the natural prey of mountain lions. Residents say they're more concerned about the presence of coyotes than the recent mountain lion sighting.
