Cougar (Puma concolor): Mountain Lion Facts and Range

One cat with many names

The cougar holds a Guinness World Record for the animal with the most names, with more than 40 in English alone. In the western United States it is usually called the mountain lion, in Canada the cougar, and in Latin America and most of Europe the puma. In the eastern US and Florida the old name panther is still used, and catamount (“cat of the mountain”) survives in New England.

All of these names describe one species. The scientific name concolor means “of one color”, a reference to its plain, unspotted coat. For the full story behind each name, see are cougars and mountain lions the same?

Despite the name “mountain lion”, the cougar is not a lion. It belongs to the cat subfamily Felinae, which includes lynxes and house cats, and its closest living relatives are the jaguarundi and the cheetah.

Appearance

A cougar is a long, slender cat with a small, rounded head, erect ears and a very long, thick tail that makes up about a third of its total length. The coat is short and plain, ranging from silvery gray to tawny or reddish brown, with paler fur on the chest, belly and throat. The muzzle is white with black patches at the sides, the backs of the ears are dark, and the tip of the tail is black.

Kittens look quite different. They are born with dark spots on the body, dark rings on the tail and blue eyes. The spots fade gradually over the first year, and the eyes turn gray-brown or golden. Faint spots on the flanks sometimes remain on young adults.

Cougars have large paws and proportionally the biggest hind legs of any cat, which give them powerful jumps and short, fast sprints. Their tracks are round, about 7.5–10 cm (3–4 in) wide, with four toe pads and usually no claw marks, because the claws are retracted while walking.

How big is a cougar?

The cougar is the fourth-largest cat species by weight, after the tiger, lion and jaguar. Adults stand about 60–90 cm (24–35 in) at the shoulder, and males measure roughly 2–2.7 m (6.5–9 ft) from nose to tail tip. Males are typically 40–50 percent heavier than females.

Cougars are largest far from the equator, in Canada, the northern Rockies and Patagonia, and smallest in the tropics. The heaviest reliably recorded cougar, from 1901, weighed about 105 kg (232 lb); heavier claims exist but are thought to be exaggerated. More detail is in how big do mountain lions get?

Habitat and range

Cougars range across about 110 degrees of latitude. In North America they live mainly in British Columbia, Alberta and the western United States, from the Pacific coast to the Rocky Mountains, the Black Hills of South Dakota and parts of Texas. Further south they occur through Mexico and Central America and across most of South America to the southern Andes and Patagonia.

The cougar is a habitat generalist. It lives in coniferous and deciduous forests, tropical rainforest, dry scrub, deserts, grassland and swamps, and from sea level to about 5,800 m (19,000 ft) in the Andes. What it needs most is cover for stalking, such as dense brush, broken rocky ground or forest, and enough deer or other prey.

After being wiped out from most of eastern North America by the early 1900s, cougars survived in the East only as the small Florida panther population. Young males from the West now wander far eastward, and small breeding groups have appeared in places such as Nebraska. The full picture is in where do mountain lions live?

Diet and hunting

Cougars are strict carnivores and skilled ambush hunters. In North America, hoofed mammals make up most of their food, especially mule deer and white-tailed deer, plus elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goats and occasionally young moose. They also eat smaller animals such as rabbits, hares, porcupines, raccoons, beavers and birds. Florida panthers often take feral hogs and armadillos.

A hunting cougar moves quietly through cover, creeps as close as it can, then rushes and leaps onto the prey’s back, usually killing it with a bite to the neck or throat. It does not chase prey over long distances. After a large kill it drags the carcass to a sheltered spot, covers it with leaves and soil, and returns to feed for several days.

On average, an adult cougar kills one deer-sized animal about every one to two weeks. A mother raising large kittens needs to kill much more often. In South America, where competition with the larger jaguar is strong, cougars eat more medium-sized prey such as capybaras, viscachas and guanacos.

Behavior and social life

Cougars are solitary and territorial. Adults meet mainly to mate, and the only lasting groups are mothers with their kittens. Each cat uses a large home range: males typically cover about 150–1,000 square km (58–386 sq mi), and females use areas about half that size. A male’s range usually overlaps the ranges of several females but not those of other males.

They are most active around dusk, dawn and at night, especially near people, but in remote areas they may hunt in daylight. They mark their ranges with scrapes, small piles of leaves and soil scratched together with the hind feet and marked with urine.

Cougars are mostly silent. They purr like house cats and communicate with whistles, chirps, growls and hisses. During the breeding season, females make loud, eerie yowls, often described as sounding like a person screaming.

Reproduction and lifespan

Cougars can breed at any time of year, although in the north most kittens are born in spring and summer. Females first breed at about 18 months to three years old. After a pregnancy of about 82–103 days, the mother gives birth in a sheltered den among rocks or dense vegetation. Litters contain one to six kittens, usually two or three.

Newborn kittens weigh about 400–500 g (around 1 lb) and are blind at first. They start eating meat at around two months, follow their mother to kills, and begin to catch small prey at about six months. They stay with her for 12–24 months before leaving to find their own territory. Young males often travel hundreds of kilometers, while young females usually settle closer to home.

Wild cougars usually live about 8–13 years, although a few reach their late teens. In captivity they can live to about 20 years.

Predators and threats

Adult cougars have no regular natural predators, but they do compete with other large carnivores. Gray wolves and grizzly and black bears often steal cougar kills, and wolf packs occasionally kill cougars, especially kittens. In the tropics, jaguars dominate where the two cats meet.

The main threats come from people. Habitat loss and fragmentation, roads, conflict over livestock and legal or illegal killing all reduce cougar numbers. Highways are deadly barriers: vehicle collisions are a leading cause of death for Florida panthers, and in southern California the small, cut-off population of the Santa Monica Mountains has become inbred. Work on a large wildlife bridge over US Highway 101 near Los Angeles, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, began in 2022 to help cougars and other animals cross safely.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List classifies the cougar as Least Concern because of its huge range, but notes that the population is decreasing. The species is protected from hunting in most South American countries and regulated in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

The Florida panther, the last breeding population of cougars in the eastern United States, has been listed as endangered since 1967. It fell to perhaps 20–30 animals in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1995, eight female cougars from Texas were released in Florida to restore genetic diversity, and the population has since recovered to an estimated 120–230 adults and subadults. In 2018 the US Fish and Wildlife Service removed the “eastern cougar” from the endangered list after concluding that it had been extinct since the 1930s.

Myths and facts

Myth: Mountain lions roar. Cougars cannot roar. Their famous “scream” is a breeding call, not a roar.

Myth: Black panthers are black cougars. There is no confirmed record of a melanistic (all-black) cougar. The black “panthers” of the tropics are jaguars or, in Africa and Asia, leopards.

Myth: Cougars live only in mountains. They do favor rugged country, but they also live in deserts, swamps, farmland edges and rainforest.

Fact: Cougars purr. The cougar is among the largest cats able to purr.

Cougars and people

Cougars have long been admired and feared. The Inca associated the puma with strength and power, and several Native American peoples gave the cat an important place in their stories. European settlers, by contrast, killed cougars widely as threats to livestock, which is why they vanished from most of eastern North America.

Today cougars and people increasingly share space, especially in the western US and British Columbia. Attacks on humans are very rare: across the US and Canada there are usually only a handful each year at most, and fatal attacks average fewer than one a year. Children and people alone outdoors are most at risk. Learn about the real risk and how to behave in cougar country in do mountain lions attack humans?