COUGAR
    "The Phantom Cat""

Puma concolor

	"Not the Mercury Cougar..."
"Nope. Not that one either..."
	"You're getting warmer..."

"Wait for it....................."

"AHA!  Now that's what I'm talking about!"

A little bit of background on the cougar...

The most commonly used name for the Puma concolor is the cougar.  Cougars have one of the most widely spread habitats in the Western Hemisphere and  this is why they have so many common names.  These common names  include puma, panther, catamount, and mountain lion.  Each of these names have arisen from the different geographical habitats of the cougar throughout time.  The cougar was first coined a “lion” because the Europeans in the New World identified its obvious resemblance to the Old World cat of that name.   Carl Linnaeus was the first to name the cougar species in 1771. He called it Felis concolor which  means “cat of one color” in Latin. “Puma” was what the Incas called the cougar, and roughly translated this means “magic mighty animal”. Currently, Puma is the accepted genus for the cougar replacing Felis (Ewer 1973) therefore resulting in the scientific name Puma concolor. 

Home   Classification    Habitat    Reproduction    Nutrition   Adaptations    Interesting facts   About me   References   Multipleorganisms.net

Please email any questions or comments to cory.amy@students.uwlax.edu

University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Homepage

This page was last updated on April 25, 2008.