Cougar

Quick Take

• Cougars are called big cats, but there's one thing they do that makes them far more like your house cat than a lion, and it involves a sound you'd never expect. Cougar vocalizations explained →
• This apex predator's dinner menu includes at least one animal that most North American wildlife never encounters, a fact whose explanation turns out to be stranger than you'd think. Explore the cougar's diet →
• Cougar reproduction involves a biological trigger so unusual that researchers are still puzzling over exactly how it works. Unusual mating biology →
• Even at peak hunting power, a cougar's own prey can kill it, and the way it happens reveals something unsettling about the predator's high-risk strategy. Hunting hazards and lifespan →

As North America’s second-largest cat, the cougar is an intimidating animal to run into. The cougar is unable to roar because it lacks the laryngeal anatomy needed to do so. Instead, the big cat purrs, growls, hisses, screams, whistles, and chirps.

Cougars are also called pumas, panthers, and mountain lions. The cats have round heads, pointed ears, and slender bodies.

Cougar Top Facts

• Cougars are superior hunters.
• Cougars dine on animals like deer, raccoons, and even crocodiles.
• Like most felines, cougars are solitary animals.

Classification and Scientific Name

The cougar is known by the scientific name “Puma concolor” or “Felis concolor.” Carl Linnaeus proposed the name “Felis concolor” to describe a big cat that has a long tail. The animal has more names in the dictionary than any other animal. Along with mountain lion and puma, the cat is also known as catamount and red tiger, among others.

Cougars belong to the subfamily Felinae. After Linnaeus introduced a scientific description of cougars, researchers listed 32 zoological subspecies until the late 1980s. According to genetic studies, many of the subspecies were too close to be considered separate. Now, scientists have identified six phylogeographic groups.

Appearance

A cougar’s body is similar to that of a house cat, but on a larger scale. Mountain lion coats are a grayish tan to a reddish hue, and the animal features lighter parts underneath. The end of a cougar’s tail is black, and the cat has black markings on its ears and face.

An amazing fact about cougars is that they can jump 20 feet into the air. This allows them to pounce on prey that’s 20 feet to 40 feet away from a standing position.

Pumas range from 5 feet to 9 feet in length from head to tail, with male cougars weighing as much as 150 pounds and females topping out at about 100 pounds.

Behavior

Mountain lions are solitary animals unless a mother cougar is raising cubs. On occasion, the animals will share kills. They establish loose communities centered on the territories of dominant male cougars. Cats that live within these areas socialize with one another more often than animals that are outside of them.

Habitat

These big cats have one of the largest ranges of any wild animal species throughout the Americas. You’ll find them from Canada’s northern Yukon to the southern Andes. The animal can adapt to a variety of habitats, including forests, mountainous deserts, and lowland areas.

Cougars prefer areas with steep canyons, rimrock, and dense brush for cover. However, they can survive well in open areas that have very little vegetation.

Evolution and Origin

Cougars evolved from a common ancestor alongside the African cheetah and American jaguarundi, the oldest known fossil records discovered. Cougars actually originated in North America and are believed to have been extirpated during the Pleistocene extinction.

What Do Cougars Eat?

These big cats aren’t picky about their diets. They’ll dine on insects, mice, beavers, raccoons, rabbits, and wild turkeys. Since cougars live in Patagonia’s Monte Leon National Park, they’ve become quite skilled at hunting penguins.

Those who live in Florida sometimes make a meal out of a crocodile. In North America, cougars frequently eat deer. In fact, they typically kill one large deer every two weeks. These large felines are not generally scavengers, but they will eat an exposed deer carcass, displaying opportunistic behavior.

Because of their powerful hind legs, cougars are ambush predators. They stalk their prey through brush and trees before leaping powerfully onto them and delivering a deadly neck bite. The animal can break the neck of its prey with one strong bite and the force of driving its prey to the earth.

Predators

Humans are the biggest predators of cougars, with people hunting them for sport and to protect livestock. People are also the main cause of the cats losing their habitats. In states like Florida, highways are often deadly to cougars.

Out in the wild, wolf packs will prey on the cats because they’re able to surround the animal and overwhelm it with numbers. When it comes to a one-on-one battle, the cougar will usually survive the match. Wolves are more likely to affect cougars by dominating the same territory and taking advantage of prey opportunities. Wolves can also disrupt the cougar’s ability to reproduce.

The feline is not on the endangered species list, but conservation groups remain unsure about how well the cougar population is doing around the world. In the United States, the only state that prohibits hunting them is California. However, it is illegal to hunt them in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Venezuela, Brazil, and most of Argentina. To hunt the big cat in the U.S., hunters must obtain a permit unless they live in Texas.

Poachers target cougars, but the effects of this action on the cat are unknown. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports that the illegal animal part trade is a $200 million a year market, and it’s growing.

Reproduction

Male and female mountain lions reach sexual maturity at 24 months, but according to research, females have mated as young as 20 months. The age at which a cougar first breeds often depends on her establishing a home range. A major breeding challenge that cougars face is finding each other due to their solitary lifestyle. The cats are usually scattered across hundreds of miles of rough terrain.

Another reproduction complication is that female cougars are only interested in mating for several days out of a month. Despite the challenges, the animals find a way to breed. They use their keen senses to locate mates and are polygamous.

When cougars breed, they do so vigorously by copulating at a rate of 50 times to 70 times within 24 hours for 7 to 8 days. Each time a couple copulates, it lasts less than a minute. Because the felines are so vigorous, researchers believe that the act stimulates ovulation, which is when the ovaries release an egg so that it can be fertilized.

Cubs

After conceiving, a female cougar retires to a den after 88 to 96 days and gives birth to a litter of cubs. Cougar litters range from one to six cubs, with an average of two to three. A young female cougar may only have one cub for her first litter. Researchers believe that this gives young females time to develop their mothering skills.

Cougars generally bear young every other year, which means that a female mountain lion that lives for 8 to 10 years may be able to produce five litters. According to reports, one mother cougar in captivity produced seven litters in 16 years.

Baby cougars usually weigh slightly more than 1 pound when they are born. Within 10 to 20 days, they grow to double their weight, and by the time they reach 2 months of age, they can weigh as much as 9 pounds.

When cougar babies are born, their coats typically have black spots, which camouflage them, protecting the juveniles from predators. The spots generally last for about 6 months. Cubs are born deaf, blind, and nearly immobile, making them vulnerable to predators. To gain strength and learn how to take down their prey, cougar cubs play and pounce on one another.

Mother cougars start taking their cubs to a kill when they reach 7 to 8 weeks of age. The female will also take the meat to her babies until she weans them when they are 2 to 3 months old. As the cubs grow, the female will leave them at a kill site for several days at a time while she hunts for their next meal. Mother cougars will travel farther in search of food as their cubs grow older and stronger.

Lifespan

When a cougar is in captivity, the animal can live for as long as 20 years. However, there is a report of one captive cougar that lived to be 29. In the wild, their lifespan is about half that. Researchers disagree about which sex lives longer. Some say that females live for fewer years due to the stress of having and raising cubs.

Even when humans are not threatening them, cougars tend to have a high-risk lifestyle. They are frequently exposed to injury or death because they target animals that are larger than themselves.

When they are attacking elk or deer, they may be thrown against a tree or a rock hard enough to break their backs. Sometimes, they are trampled by the hooves of herd animals. Cougars can be impaled by a branch or an antler, and an injury like this may result in starvation. The cats die from lightning strikes, poisonous snake bites, and rock slides.

Population

Researchers have been unable to determine exactly how many cougars exist in the wild. Some believe there are approximately 30,000 of them throughout the American West.

The density of cougars generally ranges from one to seven cats for every 100 kilometers of territory, with males permitting several females to be present in their ranges. Oregon estimates that its cougar population is around 6,600, while California believes that it has between 4,000 and 6,000 animals.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, which tracks the cougar population in each Central and South American country, reports that there are fewer than 50,000 of the big cats populating that part of the world. This population is believed to be declining.

However, cougar researchers in the U.S. believe that the country’s population is rebounding. California has protections in place for its cougar population, but thirteen states, including Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, classify them as a game species, allowing people to hunt them for sport.