The cougar is most closely related to the jaguarundi and the cheetah. It was placed in the genus Puma by William Jardine in 1834. The second half of the name, "concolor" is Latin for "of uniform color". Taxonomy and evolutionįelis concolor was the scientific name proposed by Carl Linnaeus in 1771 for a cat with a long tail from Brazil. Other names include "panther" (although it does not belong to the genus Panthera) and "catamount" (meaning "cat of the mountains"). In the western United States and Canada, it is also called "mountain lion", a name first used in writing in 1858. The first use of puma in English dates to 1777, introduced from Spanish from the Quechua language. The term puma is also sometimes used in the United States. "Puma" is the common name used in Latin America and most parts of Europe. The cougar holds the Guinness record for the animal with the greatest number of names, with over 40 in English alone. In 1774, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon converted cuguacu ara to cuguar, which was later modified to "cougar" in English. Cuguacu ara was then adopted by John Ray in 1693. Marcgrave's rendering was reproduced in 1648 by his associate Willem Piso. In the 17th century, Georg Marcgrave named it cuguacu ara. The word cougar is borrowed from the Portuguese çuçuarana, via French it was originally derived from the Tupi language. Look up cougar in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. In particular, the eastern cougar population is considered to be mostly locally extinct in eastern North America since the early 20th century, with the exception of the isolated Florida panther subpopulation. Intensive hunting following European colonization of the Americas and ongoing human development into cougar habitat has caused populations to decline in most parts of its historical range. Fatal attacks on humans are rare but increased in North America as more people entered cougar habitat and built farms. It is reclusive and mostly avoids people. While large, it is not always the apex predator in its range, yielding prey it has killed to American black bears, grizzly bears, and wolf packs. Individual home ranges depend on terrain, vegetation and abundance of prey. Cougars are territorial and live at low population densities. Primary food sources are ungulates, particularly deer, but it also hunts smaller prey, such as rodents. It is an ambush predator that pursues a wide variety of prey. The cougar is largely solitary by nature and considered both nocturnal and crepuscular, although daytime sightings do occur. It prefers habitats with dense underbrush and rocky areas for stalking but also lives in open areas. It is an adaptable, generalist species, occurring in most American habitat types. The puma (as it is called in Spanish) inhabits every mainland country in Central and South America, making it the most widely distributed large, wild, terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere, and one of the most widespread on planet Earth. Their range extends further south through Mexico, where they are found in nearly every state, to the Amazon Rainforest and the southern Andes Mountains in Patagonia. Its range spans the Canadian Provinces of the Yukon, British Columbia, and Alberta, the Rocky Mountains, and other areas in the Western United States. They are not technically grouped with the "true" big cats, as they are slightly smaller than other big cats, and they lack the vocal physiology to roar (unlike lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars). The cougar ( Puma concolor) ( / ˈ k uː ɡ ər/, KOO-gər), also known as the puma, mountain lion, catamount, or panther, is a large cat native to the Americas, second in size only to the stockier jaguar. Cougar range (without recent confirmations across northern Canadian territories, eastern U.S.
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