59 Fun Facts About Cougar

What is the cougar's scientific name?

Puma concolor. The species name means 'of one colour', for the plain brown coat that covers the adult's back, sides, limbs and tail.

How do adult cougars usually live?

Alone. Their home ranges overlap, though, and adults will put up with one another at a kill and share the meat, a favour that tends to be returned.

The word 'cougar' most likely goes back to which South American language?

Tupi. That is the likeliest origin: the Portuguese wrote the word down as 'çuçuarana' and the French naturalist Buffon reshaped it as 'couguar', though a Guarani origin has also been proposed.

The name 'puma' reached English through Spanish from which language of the Inca Empire?

Quechua. English took the Incas' word from Spanish in 1777, three years after 'cougar' had arrived by way of French, which is how one cat came by a pair of borrowed names.

Which name for the cougar is in common use across the United States?

Mountain lion. The American coinage misleads twice over: the cat is no true lion, and it is as much at home in swamps and deserts as on mountains.

Which New England university's teams are the Catamounts, after an old name for the cougar?

Vermont. The name beat tomcat, camel and cow in a 1926 campus ballot; 'catamount' is short for 'cat of the mountain' and first meant wild cats of the Old World.

In the southern United States, the cougar is sometimes called what, a corruption of 'panther'?

Painter. Frontier speech bent 'panther' into the word in the 1700s, and in James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers Natty Bumppo shoots a 'she-painter' beside her dead cub.

Which two cats are the cougar's closest relatives?

The jaguarundi and the cheetah. The three form one branch of the cat family, and some geneticists think the cheetah's line arose in the Americas before crossing to Asia and Africa.

In 1995, eight female cougars were brought from which state to rescue the inbred Florida panther?

Texas. Kinked tails and heart defects showed how inbred Florida's few remaining cats had become; after the Texans arrived, panther numbers tripled and the defects grew rarer.

Besides the lion and tiger, which is the only cat that outweighs the cougar?

Jaguar. Where the two share a forest the jaguar takes the bigger prey and the cougar settles for smaller animals; no other cat of the Americas is larger than the cougar.

Where in its range are cougars smallest?

Close to the equator. Tropical cougars live on smaller prey, while those of Canada and Patagonia, which bring down far bigger animals, grow much larger.

What colour are cougar kittens' eyes at birth?

Blue. The eyes turn yellow as the kittens grow, and the dark spots that help hide them in dappled light while their mother is away hunting fade as well.

What does a cougar usually do when hunting dogs give chase?

Climbs a tree. Hind legs among the longest in the cat family for its size can launch it about 5.5 metres straight up, well out of the dogs' reach.

The cougar's range runs from the Yukon to the southern tip of which country?

Chile. The range crosses 110 degrees of latitude, down to the Strait of Magellan, because the cat can make a living almost anywhere, from desert scrub to rainforest and snowy conifer woods.

Where have cougars been recorded at their highest elevation?

The Andes. The record, about 5,800 metres, comes from southern Peru, yet the same species also stalks the sea-level swamps of Florida.

Scientists studying what feeds at cougar kills near Yellowstone collected 215 species of which insects?

Beetles. A cougar leaves much of each carcass behind, so every kill feeds a crowd of scavengers; a 2022 review tied the cat to 485 other species in all.

Across North America, which animals are the cougar's main prey?

Deer. Each cougar takes dozens of hoofed animals a year, and researchers reckon that by thinning the herds the cats spare people deadly collisions on the road.

In Argentina's coastal Monte León National Park, returning cougars began preying on a mainland colony of which birds?

Penguins. Magellanic penguins had settled the shore while the cats were gone; once the park let cougars return, the feast drew them in the highest density ever recorded.

Which spear-horned African antelope, released in New Mexico for hunters, have cougars learned to prey on?

Gemsbok. Set loose from 1969 to give hunters big game, the oryx multiplied with almost nothing to prey on them, until researchers found cougars picking off their newborn calves.

How does a cougar usually finish off large prey?

A bite to the neck. The cat creeps close, springs from cover, usually from behind, and bites the base of the skull or clamps the throat until the animal suffocates.

What does a cougar usually do with a large kill it cannot finish in one meal?

Covers it with leaves. The cat drags the carcass under cover and buries it in leaves, grass or snow to hide it from scavengers, then comes back to feed for several days.

In a playback experiment, cougars fled their kills when hidden speakers played which sound?

People talking. Cats that heard human voices fled far more often than those played frog calls and cut their feeding time by more than half, so they have to kill again sooner.

In Yellowstone, which animals will take over a cougar's kill and leave the cat to hunt again?

Bears. Grizzlies and black bears alike will take over a carcass, and where bears are busiest the cats kill more often and spend less time feeding at each kill.

The cougar's eerie night-time scream, often likened to a woman's, is mainly a call for what purpose?

To find a mate. Cougars are usually silent, but a female in heat and the males she draws can wail on and off for hours, a sound also compared to a crying child.

Which animal is the cougar's most important prey in southern Patagonia?

Guanaco. Researchers feared that sheep and introduced hares had replaced native prey there, but the cats' droppings showed this wild relative of the llama was still their mainstay.

How did a collared cougar reach Squaxin Island in Washington's Puget Sound in 2020?

By swimming. The young male crossed about a kilometre of cold sea, and researchers now reckon cougars could reach more than half of the Salish Sea's thousands of islands the same way.

Who raises a litter of cougar kittens?

The mother alone. Born blind after about three months in the womb, the kittens trail her to kills, learn to hunt at her side and as a rule stay with her for more than a year.

What happens to a cougar's juveniles when she comes into heat again?

They must disperse or the male kills them. Males sometimes kill cubs that are not their own, so the young strike out alone, and young males roam farthest, some for hundreds of kilometres.

Apart from people, which animals kill the most wild cougars?

Other cougars. Males kill rivals in fights over territory, while wolves and bears, for all their size, kill a cougar only now and then.

How do mother cougars and their kittens keep in contact?

Whistles, chirps and mews. A kitten's loud, bird-like whistle calls its mother back, a world away from the growls, snarls and hisses that adults keep for rivals.

A male cougar rakes leaves into small mounds called scrapes, then marks them with what?

Urine. Camera studies show that passing cougars use the raked-up mound to find the message and the scent to read it, like a noticeboard beside the trail.

How does the IUCN classify the cougar, from Canada to Patagonia?

Least Concern. The cat still holds so much ground that it rates the lowest risk category, even though it was wiped out across most of eastern North America.

Which human-made hazard kills more Florida panthers than any other?

Road traffic. So few panthers survive, most of them in south Florida, that each one lost on the highway matters, and crossings with fencing have been built to steer the cats safely past the traffic.

DNA showed that a cougar killed on a Connecticut highway in 2011 had walked from which state?

South Dakota. The young male had roamed at least 1,500 miles from the Black Hills, in the very year federal biologists concluded that the eastern cougar was extinct.

P-22, the celebrity cougar of Los Angeles, lived for a decade in which park?

Griffith. His ten years in a city park hemmed in by freeways made him the face of the campaign that paid for a wildlife bridge over the 101.

P-22's most famous photograph, published in National Geographic, showed him in front of what?

The Hollywood Sign. Photographer Steve Winter spent 15 months setting camera traps in the park, some of them stolen, before one caught the cat walking past it.

What colour is the tip of an adult cougar's long tail?

Black. Kittens start life with dark rings all the way down the tail, but the rings fade with their spots and only the tip stays dark.

In a century of recorded cougar attacks, most victims belonged to which group?

Children. A small, fast-moving person can look like prey to the cat, which is why families in cougar country are told to keep youngsters close and pick them up if one appears.

What should you do if a cougar approaches?

Stand tall and back away. Go slowly: running can trigger the cat's instinct to chase and crouching makes you look like prey; if it does attack, fight back, as most people who do drive it off.

In a Washington study, complaints about cougars rose most in the year after an increase in what?

Cougar hunting. Killing the older resident cats seems to open their territories to young males on the move, the animals most likely to turn up among livestock and houses.

Which former US president was shown a puma-attack scar by the Argentine explorer Francisco Moreno?

Theodore Roosevelt. He had written that cougars were practically harmless to people, so Moreno showed him the scar on his face left by a puma that mauled him in Patagonia in 1877.

Which Inca city is reported to have been laid out in the shape of a cougar?

Cusco. In the traditional reading the hilltop complex of Sacsayhuamán forms the head and the Pumachupan quarter the tail, though some scholars think the puma was only ever a metaphor.

To the Apache and Walapai, the wail of the cougar was a sign of what?

Death. Yet the animal was also turned to healing: some peoples of the far West are said to have dangled its dried paws over the sick to drive out evil.

In the Cherokee creation story, what did the cougar and the owl earn by staying awake for seven nights?

Sight in the dark. Most animals dozed off before the week was out, and the trees that stayed awake with the watchers, such as the pine and the holly, won the right to stay green all winter.

How does a cougar's paw print differ from a big dog's?

It shows no claw marks. Like a house cat, a cougar walks with its claws sheathed to keep them sharp for gripping prey, so only the pads print.

By one theory, why did North American cougars survive the Ice Age extinctions that took Smilodon?

Greater dietary flexibility. Wear on fossil teeth from the La Brea Tar Pits shows Ice Age cougars crunched bone as well as flesh, while the American lion beside them ate mostly fresh meat.

Hidden cameras in a Brazilian national park in 2013 photographed a wild cougar of which rare colour?

White. The pale young male was photographed four times that year and never seen again; a black cougar, for all the 'black panther' stories, has still never been confirmed.

Which state protects the cougar under a 1990 Wildlife Protection Act that bans hunting it?

California. Voters narrowly passed it as Proposition 117, barring the sport hunting that a 1972 moratorium had first halted and setting aside $30 million a year for wildlife habitat.

A male cougar's home range usually overlaps the ranges of whom?

Several females. A male's range is about twice the size of a female's and takes in those of his mates, and he keeps rival males out so that he can dominate the matings within it.

Gauchos of the Argentine pampas gave the puma which nickname, recorded by the naturalist W. H. Hudson?

Man's friend. In Spanish it was 'amigo del cristiano': gauchos told Hudson the cat would not harm a person even to defend itself, though a few attacks have since been confirmed.

Who proposed the scientific name Felis concolor in 1771 for a long-tailed cat from Brazil?

Carl Linnaeus. He filed the animal under Felis beside the house cat, and many reference books kept it there until the 1990s, long after a genus of its own had been proposed.

The last known eastern cougar was trapped in 1938 in which state?

Maine. The cat went on the endangered list in 1973 all the same and stayed there for decades, long after there was anything left of it to protect.

Why does a cougar ambush its prey rather than run it down?

It tires quickly. A cougar is explosive over a few bounds but lacks the staying power of a wolf, so it creeps close and settles the hunt within seconds.

Whose votes made the Florida panther the official state animal of Florida in 1982?

Students. Florida's schoolchildren picked what is now the most endangered of the state's symbols, a cat the state itself had once paid bounties to have killed.

What does a cougar's long tail, about a third of its length, mainly help it do?

Keep its balance. The heavy tail works like a rudder, steadying the cat when it swerves after dodging prey or crosses steep, broken ground.

By one theory, North America's original cougars died out 10,000 years ago and were replaced from where?

South America. Cougars across North America are so alike genetically that they seem to descend from a handful of founders, while the cats of eastern South America are far more varied.

In Death Valley, cougars have begun hunting the young of which feral animals that trample desert springs?

Donkeys. Where cougars take their foals, the herds visit water mostly by day and far less often, so the springs keep more plant cover and suffer less trampling.

By 2021, National Park Service tests had found traces of what in 28 of 29 Los Angeles-area cougars?

Rat poison. Bait put out for rodents works its way up the food chain to the cats, and in 2014 the famous P-22, found with it in his blood, had to be caught and treated for mange.

In 2016, the Los Angeles cougar P-22 was the prime suspect when which zoo animal was found dead?

A koala. Cameras caught P-22 prowling the Los Angeles Zoo on the night elderly Killarney was taken; the zoo declined to have him removed and tightened its enclosures instead.