Mountain lions
Mountain lions, also known as pumas or cougars, are large cats native to the Americas, ranging from southern British Columbia to the Straits of Magellan. These powerful predators inhabit diverse environments, including mountains, forests, deserts, and jungles. With a gestational period of about three months, mountain lion kittens remain with their mothers for up to two years. As solitary animals, adult males have larger territories, often overlapping with those of females, which they frequent for mating opportunities.
Mountain lions are notable for their stealth and agility, capable of swift and powerful hunts, primarily targeting deer in North America, while also preying on smaller mammals when necessary. Historically, interactions with humans have been complex; Native American cultures revered them, while European settlers viewed them as dangerous threats, leading to significant declines in their populations due to hunting and habitat destruction. Although conservation efforts have improved the status of some subspecies, such as the Florida panther, the future of mountain lions remains uncertain due to habitat loss and human encroachment.
Mountain lions
Mountain Lion Facts
Classification:
Kingdom: Animalia
Subkingdom: Bilateria
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Mammalia
Subclass: Theria
Order: Carnivora
Family: Felidae (cats)
Genus and species:Puma concolor
Subspecies:Puma concolor anthonyiPuma concolor cougar (Florida cougar), Puma concolor cabreraePuma concolor concolor (mountain lion or puma),Puma concolor costaricensis (Costa Rican puma),Puma concolor puma
Geographical location: Original range was southern British Columbia to the Straits of Magellan and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean
Habitat: Mountains, forests, deserts, and jungles
Gestational period: About three months
Life span: Up to twelve years in the wild, twenty or more years in captivity
Special anatomy: Large eyes with excellent night vision; jaws adapted to seizing and gripping prey, teeth designed for tearing and slicing flesh
Mountain lions, also known as American lions, catamounts, cougars, deer tigers, Florida panthers, and pumas, are classified in the genus Felis with small cats because they share a solid epihyal bone that restricts their ability to roar. Mountain lions purr and, during mating, emit harsh, frightening screams.
Among American felines they are second in size only to the jaguar. Adult male mountain lions weigh from eighty to over two hundred pounds and are often nine feet long from nose to tip of tail and up to thirty inches high at the shoulder. Females are about a third less in size. Cats in the equatorial regions are smaller and have thinner coats than those in the extreme north and south of the mountain lion range.
Mountain lion coats are uniform in color, varying from reddish bronze to brownish yellow or gray with black markings around the mouth and eyes and on the tip of the tail. Kittens are born spotted, but these marks soon fade. Thirty subspecies of mountain lions varying slightly in head shape, coat color, and size occupy separate geographic regions.
Behavior
Kittens remain with their mothers for eighteen months to two years. Otherwise, mountain lions live solitary lives. Each female has a distinct hunting range, and where such areas intersect, cats avoid each other. Males hunt over much larger tracts, sometimes covering hundreds of square miles. Each territory overlaps several female ranges, which the males frequently check for breeding opportunities. Older males face challenges from younger males who are seeking to establish their own territories.
Mountain lions are nocturnal or crepuscular hunters; they are almost invisible when silently stalking their victims in dim light. Except for mothers and kittens, there are few reports of cats aiding each other during hunting. Deer are the major prey in North America, and capybara and peccary are the preferred quarry in equatorial America. When larger animals are unavailable, mountain lions eat smaller mammals such as rodents, rabbits, and beavers. Blending into their surroundings, they creep slowly toward their intended prey, closing with a furious forty-five-mile-per-hour rush, sometimes leaping as much as forty feet to surprise their target. Sharp claws hold victims as canine teeth sever their spinal column or windpipe. Powerful jaws containing scissor-like carnassials and tongues with rasplike papillae permit mountain lions to harvest every speck of meat from their prize.
Relations with Humans
Several Native American cultures often carried carved mountain lion images as fetishes and revered the animal as the greatest of all hunters, and some performed rituals using skins and paws to ensure hunting success. Europeans were less respectful, treating big cats as dangerous vermin to be destroyed. From the seventeenth century through much of the twentieth century, governments offered bounties for mountain lion skins. Humans were the only species consistently preying upon adult mountain lions. Hunters set iron traps, dug pits, and used dogs to chase and tree the animals.
As expanding human settlement made wild prey scarce, mountain lions found cattle, sheep, and horses irresistible. They tended to avoid humans, but rare attacks and killings frightened people enough to lead to calls for their extermination. John James Audubon noted that by the 1840s, humans had nearly eliminated mountain lions east of the Mississippi. By 1900, few mountain lions existed in North America east of the Rocky Mountain states. Human action has also impacted the population of mountain lions in Western states, with researchers publishing evidence in 2020 that demonstrated the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park by humans in 1995 had caused a 48 percent decline in the region’s mountain lion population.
Attitudes toward mountain lions began changing in the last decades of the twentieth century. Laws in Western states banned or strictly limited hunting. However, as human intrusion into the mountain lions’ habitat increased, cats occasionally attacked solitary hikers, joggers, and skiers, stimulating calls for the removal of the predators. With great effort and expense, conservationists maintain a population of Florida panthers (Felis concolor coryi) in southwest Florida—a subspecies originally ranging from Louisiana to Florida. In Central and South America, where significant populations of mountain lions remain, the destruction of habitat by expanding settlement has greatly reduced surviving numbers. Outside Florida, mountain lions are not technically an endangered species, but their long-term future remains precarious.
Principal Terms
Carnassials: pairs of large, cross-shearing teeth on each side of the jaw
Crepuscular: active at twilight or before sunset
Epihyal: presence or absence of this hyoid bone determines if a cat generally purrs or roars
Hyoid Bones: series of connected bones at the base of the tongue
Papillae: sharp, curved projections on the tongue
Bibliography
Aridi, Rasha. "How Wolves Are Driving Down Mountain Lion Populations." Smithsonian Magazine, 21 Jan. 2021, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-wolves-western-united-states-are-driving-down-mountain-lion-populations-180976775/. Accessed 3 July 2024.
Bolgiano, Chris. Mountain Lion: An Unnatural History of Pumas and People. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 1995. Print.
“Florida Panther.” National Wildlife Federation, www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Mammals/Florida-Panther. Accessed 11 July 2023.
Kobalenko, Jerry. Forest Cats of North America: Cougars, Bobcats, Lynx. Willowdale: Firefly, 1997. Print.
Maehr, David S. Florida Panther: Life and Death of a Vanishing Carnivore. Washington: Island Press, 1997. Print.
Saunders, Nicholas J., ed. Icons of Power: Feline Symbolism in the Americas. New York: Routledge, 1998. Print.
Young, Stanley P., and Edward A. Goldman. The Puma: Mysterious American Cat. 1946. Reprint. New York: Dover, 1964. Print.