Puma (Puma concolor)

Pumas can be recognized with many names. Some people refer them to cougars, mountain lions, painters, screamer, and catamount and even as cars or a name brand. Fortunately, I’ll be talking about the animal, not the car or nice tennis shoes. First off, I would like to share about our two pumas, Princess (female) and Omaha (male).

Both cats have a similar background on how they got to Omaha’s zoo. Due to human expansion and demand for space, both of these pumas were found roaming around with close human proximity and for the safety of both cats and people, we had to take them in. It would not make sense to relocate the cats to a more fitting environment in a more appropriate setting since they would more than likely return where we found them. And that is how we named our male puma, Omaha. We found him in the city running around.

Pumas are fortunately considered on the least concerned on the conservation status spectrum. As a top predator, as all other cats, pumas are vital to an ecosystem to help regulate other organisms. They help maintain a good balance of other organisms not being over populated and causing disorder. They roam in the Americas from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes of South America. They are also considered large wild terrestrial animal in the Western Hemisphere. However, it is second heaviest in comparison to the jaguar.

A really interesting fact about the naming and etymology of pumas is that the Puma concolor holds the Guinness record for the animal with the highest number of names. It is no surprise since they have a large range of habitat that they can survive in.

As for their taxonomy and evolution, pumas are actually not considered a big cat. Pumas are more closely related to the subfamily Felinae rather than the subfamily Pantherinae (the big cats). However, pumas are the largest small cat within the Felinae subfamily. As mentioned in my other blog posting about the snow leopards, another distinguishing factor between Pantherinaes and Felinaes is that Felinas lack a specialized larynx and hyoid apparatus that allows them to roar. Instead, they just growl and hiss. Both Omaha and Princess excessively like to growl and hiss at me. They tend to be pretty sassy like Nat, the Amur leopard, since it is in their species to be extra protective of their territory.

Princess

Omaha