Cougar Trivia
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59 free Cougar trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This cougar trivia quiz covers the cat that holds a Guinness record for having the most names: cougar, puma, mountain lion, catamount, panther, painter and dozens more. It covers where the words come from, why the puma is not a true lion, how far it ranges (110 degrees of latitude, more than any other wild land mammal in the Americas), how high it can leap, why it purrs but cannot roar, what it hunts from moose to Magellanic penguins, and how it fares against wolves, bears and jaguars. It also covers the cougar in human life: the Florida panther, the eastern cougar declared extinct, P-22 of Griffith Park and his Hollywood Sign photo, what to do (and not do) if one attacks, why hunting cougars can paradoxically increase livestock losses, and the cat's place in Inca, Cherokee and Apache belief. Every question was verified against a primary reference (mainly the Wikipedia articles on the cougar, the Florida panther, the eastern cougar and P-22) and carries a citation. Play our big cats and snow leopard quizzes next.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the cougar's scientific name?
Puma concolor
Puma concolor. The species name means 'of one colour', for the plain brown coat that covers the adult's back, sides, limbs and tail.
Q 02How do adult cougars usually live?
Alone
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.
Q 03The word 'cougar' most likely goes back to which South American language?
Tupi
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.
Q 04The name 'puma' reached English through Spanish from which language of the Inca Empire?
Quechua
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.
Q 05Which name for the cougar is in common use across the United States?
Mountain lion
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.
Q 06Which New England university's teams are the Catamounts, after an old name for the cougar?
Vermont
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.
Q 07In the southern United States, the cougar is sometimes called what, a corruption of 'panther'?
Painter
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.
Q 08Which two cats are the cougar's closest relatives?
The jaguarundi and the cheetah
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.
Q 09In 1995, eight female cougars were brought from which state to rescue the inbred Florida panther?
Texas
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.
Q 10Besides the lion and tiger, which is the only cat that outweighs the cougar?
Jaguar
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.
Q 11Where in its range are cougars smallest?
Close to the equator
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.
Q 12What colour are cougar kittens' eyes at birth?
Blue
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.
Q 13What does a cougar usually do when hunting dogs give chase?
Climbs a tree
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.
Q 21What does a cougar usually do with a large kill it cannot finish in one meal?
Covers it with leaves
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.
Q 22In a playback experiment, cougars fled their kills when hidden speakers played which sound?
People talking
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.
Q 23In Yellowstone, which animals will take over a cougar's kill and leave the cat to hunt again?
Bears
Q 14The cougar's range runs from the Yukon to the southern tip of which country?
Chile
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.
Q 15Where have cougars been recorded at their highest elevation?
The Andes
The Andes. The record, about 5,800 metres, comes from southern Peru, yet the same species also stalks the sea-level swamps of Florida.
Q 16Scientists studying what feeds at cougar kills near Yellowstone collected 215 species of which insects?
Beetles
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.
Q 17Across North America, which animals are the cougar's main prey?
Deer
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.
Q 18In Argentina's coastal Monte León National Park, returning cougars began preying on a mainland colony of which birds?
Penguins
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.
Q 19Which spear-horned African antelope, released in New Mexico for hunters, have cougars learned to prey on?
Gemsbok
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.
Q 20How does a cougar usually finish off large prey?
A bite to the neck
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.
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.
Q 24The cougar's eerie night-time scream, often likened to a woman's, is mainly a call for what purpose?
To find a mate
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.
Q 25Which animal is the cougar's most important prey in southern Patagonia?
Guanaco
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.
Q 26How did a collared cougar reach Squaxin Island in Washington's Puget Sound in 2020?
By swimming
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.
Q 27Who raises a litter of cougar kittens?
The mother alone
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.
Q 28What happens to a cougar's juveniles when she comes into heat again?
They must disperse or the male kills them
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.
Q 29Apart from people, which animals kill the most wild cougars?
Other 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.
Q 30How do mother cougars and their kittens keep in contact?
Whistles, chirps and mews
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.