The Cougar (Puma concolor), also called the puma, mountain lion, catamount, panther, American lion, el leon, and even painter (scientists do not have an official name for the species), is a large felid of the subfamily Felinae. It is native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America, and is the widest of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere as well as all New World animals. The word Cougar comes from the Portuguese cucuarana, via French; it was originally derived from the Tupi Language. A current form in Brazil is sucuarana. In the 17th Century, Georg Marcgrave named it cuguaco ara. Marcgrave's rendering was reproduced in 1648 by his associate Willem Piso. Cuguaco ara was then adopted by John Ray in 1698 In 1774, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon converted Cuguarco ara to Cuguar which was later modified in English to "Cougar". It is an adaptable, generalist species, occurring in most American habitat types.
It is the 2nd-heaviest cat in the New World after the jaguar. Secretive and largely solitary by nature, the cougar is properly considered both nocturnal and crepuscular, although daytime sightings do occur. The cougar is more closely related to smaller felines, including the domestic cat, than to any species of subfamily Pantherinae, of which only the jaguar is extant in the Americas.
The cougar is an ambush predator that pursues a wide variety of prey. Primary food sources are ungulates, particularly deer. It also hunts species as small as insects and rodents. This cat prefers habitats with dense underbrush and rocky areas for stalking, but can also live in open areas. The cougar is territorial and survives at low population densities. Individual territory sizes depend on terrain, vegetation, and abundance of prey. While large, it is not always the apex predator in its range, yielding prey it has killed to lone jaguars, American black bears, and grizzly bears, American alligators (Florida panther (Puma concolor coryi) predation mainly), and to groups of gray wolves. It is reclusive and mostly avoids people.
Intensive poaching following European colonization of the Americas and the ongoing human development into cougar habitat has caused populations to drop in most parts of its historical range. In particular, the North American cougar (Puma concolor couguar) is considered to have been mostly extirpated in eastern North America in the beginning of the 20th century, except for the isolated Florida panther subpopulation.
Their are many different subspecies all around the Americas such as the endangered population of Florida panther, and the South American cougar (Puma concolor concolor). Following Linnaeus' 1st 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 6 phylogeographic groups exist. The Florida panther samples showed a low microsatellite variation, possibly due to inbreeding. As of 2017, the Cat Classification Taskforce of the Cat Specialist Group recognizes only 2 subspecies: the North American cougar, and the South American cougar, as valid.
They can survive in all sorts of habitats from like swamps and marshes, grasslands, prairies, deserts, boreal, coastal, seasonal forests, deserts, rain forests and mountain regions. Depending on where they live they have a long variety of prey meaning their opportunistic hunters. Its favorite prey is a various of deer species, particularly in North America; white-tailed deer, elk, caribou, and even bull moose are taken. But that's not the only thing they eat. In rain forests they'll hunt prey such as monkeys, sloths, birds, and in forests or mountain regions, they hunt mountain goats, bighorn sheep, wild turkey, pronghorns, raccoons, rodents, frogs, and lizards. Despite being related to little cats such as lynx and ocelots, they are the 4th largest species of felid in the world after tigers, lions, and jaguars. They can weigh from 120 lbs to 220 lbs, and in rare occasions exceeding 300 lbs. Depending on where they live, they often overlap territories with gray wolves, jaguars, black and grizzly bears. This often leads to conflict with each other over interactions or competing for the same food. Mostly they can hold their own against wolves and in rare cases maul a single wolf to death. But they aren't as strong as bears and usually give both species a wide berth.