THE PUMA - CAT OF ONE COLOUR (Puma concolor)

[BorneanTiger]

(07-03-2019, 08:55 PM)Sully Wrote: Where the hunting grounds of apex predators overlap, there are always winners and losers. Large carnivores use their brawn to force smaller rivals off meals, or worse: to wipe out the opposition entirely. Others use strength in numbers to gain ground and resources. It's a struggle for dominance that America's second-largest cats know well, a new study shows. 

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A map showing where pumas are dominant and subordinate across their range.
Research from global wild-cat conservation organisation Panthera reveals that in almost half of their expansive range across the Americas, pumas are outmatched by at least one other large predator in the contest for food, space and resources. While the cats certainly rank at the top of the food chain, they are forced to share this position with contenders like wolves, bears and jaguars. The study found that pumas came off second best to other large predators in as much as 47.5% of their 22,735,268 square-kilometre range – a habitat that's greater than any other large land mammal in the Western Hemisphere.

More here:

https://www.earthtouchnews.com/conservation/conservation/king-of-the-carnivores-how-bears-wolves-jaguars-stack-up-against-pumas

More accurately, the largest cat in the USA and North America, and the 2nd largest cat in the Americas. Though a few Mexican jaguars have come in the news for crossing into southern USA, such as El Jefe (http://www.delhidailynews.com/news/El-Je...454851534/), Mexican or Central American jaguars are not that large, being smaller than their South American relatives and the biggest of cougars. The size of jaguars generally decreases from South to North, whereas the size of cougars increases away from the Equator towards the poles. For instance, in the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve on the Mexican Pacific coast, jaguars are estimated to weigh only 50 kg (110 lbs), about the size of a female cougar (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/...75E1DC9FF5), whereas northern South American jaguars in Guyana have been reported to weigh up to 91 kg (200 lbs: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4380383/), and the biggest cougars have been recorded at over 100 kg (220 lbs: https://books.google.com/books?id=sSr8AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA12).

As Earth Touch said: https://www.earthtouchnews.com/conservat...nst-pumas/
"Size plays a big role, too. Larger animals will almost always come out on top, which is why pumas outrank smaller mesocarnivores like ocelots and lynxes, but often lose to the far heftier bear species. But when it comes to jaguars, the contest is a little less clear-cut. "Evidence that jaguars are dominant over pumas is strongest in areas where jaguars are large and weigh considerably more than pumas, but more ambiguous in Northern Mexico, where the two species are similar in size," Elbroch explains. It's unclear if pumas actually outrank their spotted cousins (that's a research topic waiting to be explored), but the results of the study show that size certainly does matter."

El Jefe the North American jaguar: http://www.delhidailynews.com/news/El-Je...454851534/

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Huge Coloradoan cougar (7 feet): https://coloradooutdoorsmag.com/2014/03/...tain-lion/

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