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 jaguars, American black bears, grizzly bears, packs of wolves or coyotes, and (in Florida) to American alligators. Individual home ranges depend on terrain, vegetation and abundance of prey. The cougar is territorial and lives at low population densities. It prefers habitats with dense underbrush and rocky areas for stalking, but also lives in open areas. Primary food sources are ungulates, particularly deer. The cougar is an ambush predator that pursues a wide variety of prey. Despite its size, the cougar is more closely related to smaller felines, including the domestic cat ( Felis catus) than to any species of the subfamily Pantherinae.
Secretive and largely solitary by nature, the cougar is properly considered both nocturnal and crepuscular, although daytime sightings do occur. The cougar is the second-largest cat in the New World after the jaguar ( Panthera onca). Due to its wide range, it has many names, including puma, mountain lion, catamount, panther and painter. It is an adaptable, generalist species, occurring in most American habitat types. Native to the Americas, its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. The cougar ( Puma concolor) is a large cat of the subfamily Felinae. Cougar range (without recent confirmations across northern Canadian territories, eastern U.S.
0 kommentar(er)
