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Today's new drawing is of a Cougar on a Fallen Tree.
The cougar has many names. Here are some of them... Cougar, Puma, Mountain Lion, Devil Cat, Mountain Cat, Ghost Cat, Mountain Screamer, Red Cat, Gato Monte, Panther, Catamount, Painter, Ghost Cat, Shadow Cat, Painter, Erielhonan, & Puma concolor. Of course, the last names here are the Genus and species names or the scientific names. The word "Cougar" seems to be of Native South American origin that was picked up and modified by the Portuguese.
Erielhonan was the name the Erie Tribe of Native Americans had for the cougar. It means "Long Tail." The Erie Nation considered themselves the Cat People. I guess Erie means "cat" or" long tail" in the Erie Tribe language. But that tribe was all but wiped out by the Iroquois Nation in the 1600s. The survivors were either adopted into one of the Iroquois tribes or were enslaved.
Cougars are not considered one of the Big Cats because cougars can scream but they don't have a roar. They DO have the ability to purr like your kitty that lives in your home. They have a ridiculously high success rate in hunting. They get 80% of the prey they stalk and ambush. Or to put it another way they are successful in 80% of their hunts.
Cougars are one of the most athletic of all animals. Their back legs are longer than their front legs and that helps them to be able to leap great distances. They can jump out of a tree branch that is 30 feet or 9 meters in the air and not get hurt. A cougar can leap up onto a cliff or tree branch that is 18 feet high! That is a high verticle leap! Cougars are built more like a cross between a leopard and a cheetah than an African Lion. But they are more closely related to cheetahs than African Lions.
Many Cougars live up in the mountains in the American West, but that is not why they got the name, "Mountain Lion." There is a folk tale about this that may be based on truth:
"In the early days of European settlers in North America, the Native Americans would bring pelts from cougars into New York City... or what would become NYC. The Europeans and Africans thought these were female lion pelts and kept asking where the male lions with their manes were. The Native Americans played a sort of joke by telling the Europeans and Africans that the male lions lived way up high in the mountains... hence the name Mountain Lion." (Male cougars do not have a big fuzzy mane like the male African Lion. The pelts the Native Americans were trading were from both male and female cougars or Mountain Lions... So it is kind of funny I think.)
Cougars are important to many Native American Tribes. Some consider the cougar evil and yet many honor and revere the cougar in legends and totems etc.
As far as size, a male cougar can be 5 feet or 1.5 meters long and that does not include the 3-foot or .91 meter tail. The big males weigh up to 158 lbs. or 72 kg. Although in 1901 a cougar was shot that weighed considerably more than 158 lbs. It weighed 232 lbs or 118 kg. There have been claims of even bigger sizes. There is even a report of a large male cougar killed in Arizona that weighed around 300 lbs. That is 136 kg. Of course, these really big male cougars are longer... possibly up to 9 feet or about 2.75 meters long... or longer. These numbers are inconsistent because there are various data available about cougar size and it is not all identical.
Cougars have a black spot on the end of their tail but not a tuft of hair like an African Lion. The males can weigh up to 158 lbs. The cougar is the biggest of the small cats. It is related to the lynx and bobcat... but a cougar is much bigger than these smaller cats. It is thought that the black spot on the end of the tail looks like a paintbrush and that may be the source of the name "Painters" for cougars.
Several schools, colleges have the cougar or Puma as their mascot. The university where I received my B.S. degree is the BYU Cougars. Washington State University's mascot is also the Cougars. There is a brand of clothing called Puma. Puma is Cougar in Spanish but it is actually a word that came from the Incas.
An interesting and rather humorous use of the word Cougar refers to a pretty but older female human who partners romantically with a younger man. (My wife is one of those... although she hates for me to call her that. . . although I do in teasing once in a while. In fact, in most people's opinion, my "Cougar" wife still looks 10 to 15 years younger than her actual age. And we are both now considered Senior Citizens by most people's definition.)
Although here in Utah, USA the cougars DO live up in the mountains, cougars live in many different habitats. In Florida the Florida Panther subspecies lives in the swampy everglades. There are cougars or pumas in the jungles of both Central America and South America. They live in the Andes of South America and there is even a subspecies called the Andean Mountain Lion. Cougars also live in the deserts and plains of North and South America.
In fact, Cougars have a range bigger than any other wild terrestrial or land animal in North America. They live from Northern Canada and Northern Alaska clear down into Argentina, South America. Cougars can bring down prey 3x their size... like a Mule Deer. They are even known to bring down Elk and Moose, although bringing down such large armed prey is dangerous to a cougar. Deer, Elk, and Moose antlers can do real damage. A wounded cougar that can't hunt is a dead cougar.
Cougars once roamed all over North America, but they are very rare in the Eastern parts of the USA due to man's encroachment and hunting. The Florida subspecies of the Florida Panther is actually endangered. They live mostly up in the mountains and other isolated areas of the Western USA, where we live.
Cougars, the Puma concolor, not human cougars, live solitary lifestyles. The males only meet up with the females for mating. The females raise their litter of usually 2-4 cubs. To be more precise, only the mother of the cubs raises the cubs. Both males and females have a range they guard from other cougars.
NOTE: This new drawing up top can be found in printable form by clicking on the "Animals" button and scrolling down to the bottom of the list of animals. Click on the title and you can print the picture to color. Below are 2 other older drawings I have done of cougars. They are from previous posts so they are further up the list of printable pages. I also am including the model for this picture. It was a taxidermy cougar on display at a sporting goods store. Finally, I added a photo of one of the prey species of our local cougars... a mule deer. I also learned that some cougars can kill and eat a porcupine, quills, and all.
Cougar from Sportsman's Warehouse
Cougar by a Pine Tree
These are prey species locally for our Utah Cougars. Of course, a cougar would probably go after the old, sick, or young members of these deer family members because that would be a safer kill.
Mule Deer Buck
Elk or Bull Elk
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