Also known as: cougar, mountain lion, catamount, American lion, painter and panther.
The
puma is an exceptionally successful predator, and its adaptability probably helped it survive the
late Pleistocene extinction of the other large North American felids. Although it is a big cat, it is
believed to be more closely related to the small cats, lacking the elastic hyoid and enlarged vocal folds
of the Pantherines. 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. 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. 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-gray to tawny to reddish. Coat color can be very different even between siblings. Faint
horizontal stripes may occur on the upper forelegs. Melanism has been widely reported (especially in
Florida), and albinism infrequently.
The female puma will give birth to two to four cubs approximately
two months after mating. The kittens are born with spotted fur, ringed tails, and tightly closed eyes.
Their eyes will open in ten days and until they are about three months old, their eyes will be blue.
The mother puma will nurse her young for about four months. The cubs will generally venture out on their
own at around 18 months of age. Sexual maturity comes around two years of age and there is no set breeding
season. In the wild, pumas live an average of 15 to 18 years. In captivity, they can live 25 to 30
years.
The known prey of pumas ranges from insects, birds, and mice up to porcupine,
capybara, pronghorn, wapiti, bighorn sheep and moose large ungulates, particularly deer, are the puma's
principal prey in North America. However, in the southern parts of puma range, and particularly in the
tropics, small to medium-sized prey appear to be more important.
Studies in North
America and southern Chile have found pumas to be primarily nocturnal and crepuscular, with activity
peaks at dusk and dawn, and limited diurnal activity. Males make scrapes in prominent locations, and
especially along boundaries of home ranges. Large kills are often covered with scraped-over vegetation
and dirt and pumas often remain in the vicinity, returning frequently to feed.
Pumas have a very
broad latitudinal range encompassing a diverse array of habitats, from arid desert to tropical rainforest
to cold coniferous forest, from sea level up to 5,800 m in the Andes.
The puma's historical
distribution included every major habitat type in the Americas up to the boreal forests of the far north,
but pumas have been essentially eliminated from eastern North America. Severe reduction of native ungulate
populations through hunting and forest clearance during the nineteenth century, coupled with direct persecution
of the puma, are the probable causes. Deer have since multiplied and spread, and the puma is now found
in areas colonized by deer which were outside its historical range, such as the Great Basin Desert in
the western U.S.
Eastern cougar (F.c. cougar) and Florida panther (F.c. coryi), endangered in
North America. In Central and South America, the puma still occurs throughout much of its historical
range. However, focused studies have only been carried out in North America.
In Canada,
the puma has been driven from most of its former range, and the main population is now found in south-western
British Columbia, where they are estimated to number 3,500-5,000. In adjacent habitat in Alberta, there
is an estimated a population of 700 pumas. There are occasional reports of pumas in the far south of
the North-West Territories and in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Presence in a remote forested area of east-central New Brunswick was recently confirmed by the finding
of a set of tracks and scat.
As in Canada, the
puma was essentially eliminated from most of the eastern US within 200 years following European colonization.
The only eastern state where the puma is unequivocally known to persist is Florida. In the north-eastern
US, hundreds of sighting reports have been investigated and compiled but the existence of actual remnant
populations has not been verified. Several networks have been established to further investigate the
species status in the region, including the Eastern Puma Research Network and the Friends of the Eastern
Panther. Pumas are rare in the central plains region, with few resident populations. The puma has fared
much better in the less populated western US, and with changes in management status from "varmint" (vermin)
to game animal, numbers there appear to be increasing. Population estimates by state wildlife authorities
indicate that pumas in the western US probably number over 10,000.
