Conservation Status
Not threatened. Population decreasing.
Description
The cougar is an exceptionally successful generalist predator, and its adaptability probably helped it survive the late Pleistocene extinctions of the other large North American cats. Although it is a big cat, it is believed to be more closely related to the small cats. While it cannot roar, it is capable of a variety of vocalizations, and both sexes have a distinctive call, likened to a woman’s scream, which is frequently associated with courtship. They have large feet and proportionally the longest hind legs of the cat family. The coat is plain and can vary in color from silvery-grey to tawny to reddish; as with the jaguarundi, coat color can be very different even between siblings. Young kittens are spotted, with blue eyes. Cougars are primarily nocturnal with activity peaks at dusk and dawn and limited daytime activity. Males make scrapes in prominent locations, and especially along boundaries of home ranges.
Size
An adult mail Cougar is about 15 times the size of a house cat. Average weights range from 53-72 kg for adult males and 34-48 kg for adult females, and males have exceptionally weighed up to 120 kg. Cougars tend to be larger away from the equator toward the poles.
Habitat
Cougars have a very broad range encompassing habitats from arid desert to tropical rainforest to cold coniferous forest, from sea level up to 5,800 m in the Andes. While habitats with dense understory vegetation is preferred, cougars can live in very open habitats with only a minimum of vegetative cover.
Diet
The known prey of cougars ranges from insects, birds, and mice up to porcupine, capybara, pronghorn, wapiti, bighorn sheep and moose . Large ungulates, particularly deer, are the cougar’s principal prey in North America. The energy requirements of females with young are such that viable populations cannot exist in areas devoid of deer-size ungulates. However, in the southern parts of cougar range, and particularly in the tropics, small to medium-sized prey appear to be more important. The cougar occurs in a variety of habitats and takes both large and small prey, similarly to the leopard in the Old World, while the jaguar, like the tiger, is closely tied to well-watered forested environments and is capable of taking very large prey. Large kills are often covered with scraped-over vegetation and dirt, and cougars often remain in the vicinity, returning frequently to feed. However, cougars rarely feed from carcasses of animals which they have not themselves killed.
Breeding
Litters of typically 2 - 3 kittens is born after gestation of about 92 days.
Cougars typically live about 13 years in the wild and up to 21 years in captivity.
Range
The cougar’s historical distribution included every major habitat type in the Americas up to the boreal forests of the far north, but cougars have been nearly eliminated from eastern North America. Severe reduction of native ungulate populations through hunting and forest clearance during the nineteenth century, coupled with direct persecution, are the probable causes.
Other Names
puma, mountain lion, catamount, panther (English)
puma (French)
Puma, Silberlöwe (German)
léon, léon colorado, léon de montaña (Spanish)
léon sabanero (Colombia)
onça vermelha, onça parda suçuarana (Brazil)
tig rouge (French Guiana)
guasura, yaguá-pytá (Guarani)
cabcoh (Mayan)
leopardo (Mexico)
reditigri (Suriname)
|
 |
| Cougar (Puma concolor) |
|
|
