The Cougar is a member of the Felidae family of big cats and has a large range of places it can be found. It has so many homes that it is a cat with many names, depending on the area in question. Mountain Lion, Puma, Catamount, Panther and Mercury (sorry just wanted to see if you are paying attention) are just a few names for this big cat. According to Bigcatrescue.org there are only 334 Cougars in the world with 119 being in the United States.
Habitat of the Cougar
The Cougar has the biggest range of any mammal in the Western Hemisphere other than humans. They can be found from Canada to the Andes Mountains in South America and all points in between. However they are very solitary animals and try hard to avoid being seen by man. And man destroying the Cougar’s habitat has driven it farther and farther back into deep wilderness.
Cougars like to live in areas with lots of thick brush, but can adapt and live almost anywhere, including desserts. They like the brush so they can sneak up on or ambush animals for their lunch.
Habits of the Cougar
Cougars are very solitary animals that meet only to mate or to fight each other (males) over territory. The males have a bigger area usually, that they mark by urine, feces and scratching. Males and females may overlap their territory and females and females. However two males won’t share any bit of their territory with another male willingly. They can be vocal and even purr like your house kitty.
Females tend to have little ones every 2 years and have them in dens. They have between 1 and 6 per litter. The cubs nurse until around 3 months but will eat meat before that. They will leave their mother at around 2 years old and usually stick with their brothers and sisters for a few months.
Cougars are perhaps the most athletic of the big cats. It can easily jump over 15 feet into trees. And they can run along rocky mountainous terrain with nimble grace. When there is no other choice, they are strong swimmers but would rather not get wet.
Cougars like large prey and the staple of their diet are deer. However they will gladly eat Beavers, Coyotes, Rabbits, coons and any other small prey including insects at times. Occasionally they will stalk humans for prey, but this is rare. Most Cougar attacks on humans come from people getting too close to the big cats. This unfortunately is occurring more and more with man infringing on the Cougar’s shrinking habitat. Cougars like to sneak up on their prey and pounce on them. The Cougar will go for the neck when it attacks.
The chief enemy of Cougars as with most wild animals is man. Mostly by destroying their habitat but hunting of Cougars is allowed in 14 states according to Cougarfund.org. They also state that almost half of Cougars killed by hunters, are female and leave behind young Cougars that starve. Check out the above mentioned site if you are interested in making a donation to help protect these great animals. Thanks for reading this and any other articles on Associatedcontent.com.
