The cougar (Puma concolor) (/kur/, KOO-gr), also known as the panther, mountain lion, catamount and puma, is a large cat native to the Americas. It inhabits North, Central and South America, making it the most widely distributed wild, terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere, and one of the most widespread in the world. Its range spans the Canadian Territory of Yukon, British Columbia and Alberta provinces, the Rocky Mountains and areas in the Western United States. Further south, its range extends through Mexico to the Amazon Rainforest and the southern Andes Mountains in Patagonia. It is an adaptable, generalist species, occurring in most American habitat types. It prefers habitats with dense underbrush and rocky areas for stalking but also lives in open areas.
The cougar is largely solitary. Its activity pattern varies from diurnality and cathemerality to crepuscularity and nocturnality between protected and non-protected areas, and is apparently correlated with the presence of other predators, prey species, livestock and humans. It is an ambush predator that pursues a wide variety of prey. Ungulates, particularly deer, are its primary prey, but it also hunts rodents. It is territorial and lives at low population densities. Individual home ranges depend on terrain, vegetation and abundance of prey. While large, it is not always the dominant apex predator in its range, yielding prey to other predators. It is reclusive and mostly avoids people. Fatal attacks on humans are rare but increased in North America as more people entered cougar habitat and built farms.
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The cougar is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. Intensive hunting following European colonization of the Americas and ongoing human development into cougar habitat has caused populations to decline in most parts of its historical range. In particular, the eastern cougar population is considered to be mostly locally extinct in eastern North America since the early 20th century, with the exception of the isolated Florida panther subpopulation.
The word cougar is borrowed from the Portuguese uuarana, via French; it was originally derived from the Tupi language. A current form in Brazil is suuarana.[3] In the 17th century, Georg Marcgrave named it cuguacu ara. Marcgrave's rendering was reproduced in 1648 by his associate Willem Piso. Cuguacu ara was then adopted by John Ray in 1693.[4] In 1774, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon converted cuguacu ara to cuguar, which was later modified to "cougar" in English.[5][6]
The cougar holds the Guinness record for the animal with the greatest number of names, with over 40 in English alone.[7] "Puma" is the common name used in Latin America and most parts of Europe. The term puma is also sometimes used in the United States.[8][9][10][11] The first use of puma in English dates to 1777, introduced from Spanish from the Quechua language.[12] In the western United States and Canada, it is also called "mountain lion", a name first used in writing in 1858.[13] Other names include "panther" (although it does not belong to the genus Panthera) and "catamount" (meaning "cat of the mountains").[14]
Felis concolor was the scientific name proposed by Carl Linnaeus in 1771 for a cat with a long tail from Brazil.[15] The second half of the name, "concolor" is Latin for "of uniform color". It was placed in the genus Puma by William Jardine in 1834.[16]This genus is part of the Felinae.[2] The cougar is most closely related to the jaguarundi and the cheetah.[17][18]
Following Linnaeus's first scientific description of the cougar, 32 cougar zoological specimens were described and proposed as subspecies until the late 1980s. Genetic analysis of cougar mitochondrial DNA indicate that many of these are too similar to be recognized as distinct at a molecular level, but that only six phylogeographic groups exist. The Florida panther samples showed a low microsatellite variation, possibly due to inbreeding.[18] Following this research, the authors of Mammal Species of the World recognized the following six subspecies in 2005:[2]
The cheetah lineage is suggested by some studies to have diverged from the Puma lineage in the Americas and migrated back to Asia and Africa,[17][18] while other research suggests the cheetah diverged in the Old World itself.[22]A high level of genetic similarity has been found among North American cougar populations, suggesting they are all fairly recent descendants of a small ancestral group. Culver et al. propose the original North American cougar population was extirpated during the Pleistocene extinctions some 10,000 years ago, when other large mammals, such as Smilodon, also disappeared. North America was then repopulated by South American cougars.[18]
The head of the cougar is round, and the ears are erect. Its powerful forequarters, neck, and jaw serve to grasp and hold large prey. It has four retractile claws on its hind paws and five on its forepaws, of which one is a dewclaw. The larger front feet and claws are adaptations for clutching prey.[25]
Cougars are slender and agile members of the Felidae. They are the fourth largest cat species worldwide;[26] adults stand about 60 to 90 cm (24 to 35 in) tall at the shoulders.[27] Adult males are around 2.4 m (7 ft 10 in) long from nose to tail tip, and females average 2.05 m (6 ft 9 in), with overall ranges between 1.50 to 2.75 m (4 ft 11 in to 9 ft 0 in) nose to tail suggested for the species in general.[28][29] Of this length, the tail typically accounts for 63 to 95 cm (25 to 37 in).[30] Males generally weigh 53 to 72 kg (117 to 159 lb). Females typically weigh between 34 and 48 kg (75 and 106 lb).[30][31] Cougar size is smallest close to the equator and larger towards the poles.[32] The largest recorded cougar, shot in 1901, weighed 105.2 kg (232 lb); claims of 125.2 kg (276 lb) and 118 kg (260 lb) have been reported, though they were probably exaggerated.[33] Male cougars in North America average 62 kg (137 lb), while the average female in the same region averages about 42 kg (93 lb).[34] On average, adult male cougars in British Columbia weigh 56.7 kg (125 lb) and adult females 45.4 kg (100 lb), though several male cougars in British Columbia weighed between 86.4 and 95.5 kg (190 and 211 lb).[35]
Depending on the locality, cougars can be smaller or bigger than jaguars but are less muscular and not as powerfully built, so on average their weight is less. Whereas the size of cougars tends to increase as distance from the equator increases,[32] which crosses the northern portion of South America, jaguars are generally smaller north of the Amazon River in South America and larger south of it. For example, while South American jaguars are comparatively large, and may exceed 90 kg (200 lb),[36] North American jaguars in Mexico's Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve weigh approximately 50 kg (110 lb), about the same as female cougars.[37]
Cougar coloring is plain (hence the Latin concolor ["one color"] in the scientific name) but can vary greatly across individuals, and even siblings. The coat is typically tawny, but it otherwise ranges from silvery-grey to reddish with lighter patches on the underbody, including the jaws, chin, and throat. Infants are spotted and born with blue eyes and rings on their tails;[31] juveniles are pale, and dark spots remain on their flanks.[29] A leucistic individual was seen in Serra dos rgos National Park in Rio de Janeiro in 2013 when it was recorded by a camera trap, indicating that pure white individuals do exist within the species, though they are extremely rare.[38][39]
The cougar has large paws and proportionally the largest hind legs in the Felidae,[31] allowing for its great leaping and short-sprint ability. It is capable of leaping from the ground up to 5.5 m (18 ft) high into a tree.[40]
The cougar has the largest range of any wild land animal in the Americas, spanning 110 degrees of latitude from Yukon in Canada to the southern Andes in Chile.[1] The species was extirpated from eastern North America, aside from Florida, but they may be recolonizing their former range and isolated populations have been documented east of their contemporary ranges in both the Midwestern US and Canada.[41]
The cougar lives in all forest types, lowland and mountainous deserts and in open areas with little vegetation up to an elevation of 5,800 m (19,000 ft).[1] In the Santa Ana Mountains, it prefers steep canyons, escarpments, rim rocks and dense brush.[42]In Mexico, it was recorded in the Sierra de San Carlos.[43] In the Yucatn Peninsula, it inhabits secondary and semi-deciduous forests in El Eden Ecological Reserve.[44] In El Salvador, it was recorded in lower montane forest in Montecristo National Park and in a river basin in the Morazn Department above 700 m (2,300 ft) in 2019.[45]In Colombia, it was recorded in a palm oil plantation close to a riparian forest in the Llanos Basin, and close to water bodies in the Magdalena River Valley.[46][47]In the human-modified landscape of central Argentina, it inhabits bushland with abundant vegetation cover and prey species.[48]
Cougars are important keystone species in Western Hemisphere ecosystems, linking numerous different species at many trophic levels. In a comprehensive literature review of more than 160 studies on cougar ecology, ecological interactions with 485 other species in cougar-inhabited ecosystems have been shown to involve different areas of interaction, ranging from the use of other species as food sources and prey, fear effects on potential prey, effects from carcass remains left behind, to competitive effects on other predator species in shared habitat. The most common research topic in the literature used here was the diet of the cougar and the regulation of its prey.[49]
The cougar is a generalist hypercarnivore. It prefers large mammals such as mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, moose, mountain goat and bighorn sheep. It opportunistically takes smaller prey such as rodents, lagomorphs, smaller carnivores, birds and even domestic animals including pets.[50] The mean weight of cougar vertebrate prey increases with its body weight and is lower in areas closer to the equator. A survey of North America research found 68% of prey items were ungulates, especially deer. Only the Florida panther showed variation, often preferring feral hogs and armadillos.[32] Cougars have been known to prey on introduced gemsbok populations in New Mexico. One individual cougar was recorded as hunting 29 gemsbok, which made up 58% of its recorded kills. Most gemsbok kills were neonates, but some adults were also known to have been taken.[51] Elsewhere in the southwestern United States, they have been recorded to also prey on feral horses in the Great Basin,[52] as well as feral donkeys in the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts.[53] 152ee80cbc
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