Cougar

The puma, also called cougar or mountain lion, is a large cat native to the Americas and the most widely distributed wild land mammal in the Western Hemisphere. Its range runs from Yukon, British Columbia and Alberta through the Rocky Mountains and western United States, Mexico and the Amazon rainforest to the southern Andes in Patagonia. An adaptable generalist, it prefers dense underbrush and rocky terrain for stalking but also uses open areas. Largely solitary and territorial, it ambushes prey, mainly deer and other ungulates but also rodents. It is reclusive and mostly avoids people.

About the cougar

The cougar, also called the puma, mountain lion, catamount, and panther, is a large feline native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Yukon, British Columbia, and Alberta in Canada, through the Rocky Mountains and the western United States, south through Mexico to the Amazon rainforest and the southern Andes in Patagonia, which makes it the most widely distributed wild, terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere and among the most widespread animals anywhere on Earth. It is an adaptable generalist, found in nearly every American habitat type, though it prefers dense underbrush and rocky terrain suited to stalking prey.

Few animals carry as many names: the cougar holds the Guinness World Record for the greatest number of names of any animal, with more than 40 in English alone, including cougar, puma, mountain lion, catamount, panther, and, in parts of the southern United States, painter. Despite the common nickname "mountain lion," Puma concolor is not a true lion of the genus Panthera, cannot roar, and is not restricted to mountainous terrain. It is, however, the largest member of the Felinae subfamily capable of purring.

Physically, the cougar is the fourth largest cat species, standing roughly 60 to 90 cm (24 to 35 in) at the shoulder. Adult males average 2.4 m (7 ft 10 in) from nose to tail tip, and females average 2.05 m (6 ft 9 in), with the overall range for the species running from 1.50 to 2.75 m (4 ft 11 in to 9 ft 0 in). The tail alone typically accounts for 63 to 95 cm (25 to 37 in) of that length. Males generally weigh 53 to 72 kg (117 to 159 lb), occasionally up to 120 kg (260 lb), while females weigh 34 to 48 kg (75 to 106 lb); cougars run smaller near the equator and larger toward the poles. Its coat is plain tawny, ranging from silvery-gray to reddish with lighter patches on the underbody, jaws, chin, and throat. Kittens are born spotted with blue eyes and ringed tails, a pattern that fades as they mature into juveniles and then adults. The cougar's large hind legs, proportionally the biggest in the cat family, give it the power to leap from the ground up to 5.5 m (18 ft) into a tree.

Behavior and diet

The cougar is largely solitary and territorial, living at low population densities across large home ranges that shift in size depending on terrain, vegetation, and how much prey is available. Its activity pattern is flexible, shifting between daytime, twilight, and nighttime activity depending on the presence of other predators, prey, livestock, and people in a given area. It is an ambush predator, stalking prey through brush, trees, and rocky ledges before pursuing it, and while it is large, it is not always the top predator where it lives, sometimes yielding a kill to other animals.

The cougar is a generalist hypercarnivore, and ungulates make up the bulk of its diet across most of its range. In North America, deer, elk, moose, mountain goat, and bighorn sheep are preferred prey, and one survey found that 68% of prey items in North America were ungulates, mostly deer. The Florida panther subpopulation is a notable exception, often favoring feral hogs and armadillos instead. Cougars also take smaller prey opportunistically, including rodents, lagomorphs, smaller carnivores, birds, and occasionally domestic animals and pets; in parts of the southwestern United States they have been recorded preying on introduced gemsbok, feral horses, and feral donkeys. Further south, in Central and South America, deer make up a much smaller share of the diet, with ungulates accounting for only about 35% of prey items, and small to mid-sized mammals such as the capybara becoming more important; researchers have suggested this shift is linked to competition with the larger jaguar, which shares much of the cougar's prey base in that region. As a keystone species, the cougar interacts with roughly 485 other species across food webs, whether as predator, prey, provider of carcass remains, or competitor with other predators.

Range and habitat

The cougar has the most extensive range of any wild land animal in the Americas, spanning 110 degrees of latitude from the Yukon in Canada to the southern Andes in Chile. It lives in essentially every forest type as well as lowland and mountainous desert and open, sparsely vegetated areas, at elevations up to 5,800 m (19,000 ft). Habitat preferences vary by region: in California's Santa Ana Mountains it favors steep canyons and dense brush, in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula it uses secondary and semi-deciduous forest, and in central Argentina it inhabits bushland with heavy vegetation cover and abundant prey.

The species is also recolonizing parts of its former range in the midwestern United States and Canada. A small breeding population has become re-established in the Great Lakes region around Voyageurs National Park and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, with juveniles observed there in both 2025 and 2026, evidence that the cougar continues to expand back into territory it lost over the past century.

Conservation status

The cougar is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, most recently assessed in 2015, and it has held that category since 2008, reflecting its enormous range and overall numbers across the Americas. That said, intensive hunting following European colonization and ongoing human development into cougar habitat have driven population declines across much of its historical range.

The eastern cougar population is considered mostly locally extinct in eastern North America since the early 20th century, with the isolated Florida panther subpopulation the exception. Today the species is threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation and by the depletion of its prey through poaching. Hunting is legal in the western United States, heavy traffic causes frequent collisions in Florida, highways are a major barrier to young cougars dispersing to new areas, and California's populations are becoming fragmented as the state's human population and infrastructure grow.

The recent recolonization of parts of the Great Lakes region suggests the species can reclaim lost ground where habitat and prey allow.