Puma

Name: Felis concolor

Classification: Mammal

Description: The Puma is a type of big cat with unusually long hind legs. Its coat color varies from grizzled gray to dark brown, with intermittent shades of buff, tawny, and cinnamon red. The underparts, chin, and throat are whitish in color, and the sides of the white muzzle are framed in black. The ears are small and rounded and the tail is long, cylindrical with a black tip. In warm, humid areas, puma tend to be darker in color than the ones found in drier habitats.

Pictures:

Habitat: It reaches from Canada, through areas of the United States, and down through Central and South America. Within this extensive range, the species inhabits a variety of habitats from sea level to about 5,800 meters. These habitats include tropical rainforests, seasonally flooded savannas, semi-arid scrublands, and high mountains.

Niche: It is a predator mainly, but it when it is vulnerable it has been attacked by bears, wolves, and either other pumas.

Food Sources: Pumas choose to hunt in the nighttime, They prey on a wide range of large and small mammals including deer and other hoofed animals, raccoon,rabbits and rodents, birds and invertebrates.

Status: The status of the puma is least concern, so it is not endangered but its population is decreasing.

Cultural significance: In South America and Central America the Puma symbolizes the personal power of people.

Cool Story: This cool story was told by my father Nelson Goenaga. His story starts off when he was camping at Mount Marcy New York when he first got their they had told him to be on the look out for cougars especially black cougars, The next morning he woke up and he and his dad got out of his tent and there was a black cougar with a dead rabbit in it’s jaw about 25 feet away from him. He jumped back and the cougar bolted he got a picture but it wasn’t from as close.