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THE PUMA - CAT OF ONE COLOUR (Puma concolor)
THE PUMA - CAT OF ONE COLOUR (Puma concolor)
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THE PUMA - CAT OF ONE COLOUR (Puma concolor)
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ABSTRACT
The process of forest fragmentation affects mostly top predators, which are more prone to first disappear. Pumas, Puma concolor, are known to have a generalist diet that includes a wide variety of wild and domestic prey species. The capacity of adapting their diet to consuming prey in anthropogenic habitats may be the reason for this species' success in incorporating anthropogenic areas with different levels of fragmentation as part of its habitat. Here we report a case of puma consumption of a large wild prey species, the tapir, Tapirus terrestris. From March 2012 to October 2013 we collected 85 puma's scats opportunistically inside fragments of the Atlantic Forest in the Parana state, Brazil. In one of the scats we found hairs and some hooves of a tapir, as well as puma hairs. We propose two hypotheses that may explain the occurrence of tapir in a pumás scat: (1) an event of scavenging or (2) an event of predation on a juvenile tapir. The most likely explanation for this event may be the predation of a juvenile in response to a possible abundant presence of tapirs in the study area. This event adds to our understanding of the great plasticity of this species to adapt to an altered landscape. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a puma scavenging or predation event on a tapir. http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1676-06032016000100404  (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. 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/  *This image is copyright of its original author Huge Coloradoan cougar (7 feet): https://coloradooutdoorsmag.com/2014/03/...tain-lion/  *This image is copyright of its original author
 
One massive cougar in Parque Nacional de Salta, Argentina... (click to play)
Mountain Lion or Puma Cannibalism
Quote:“We’re still trying to get an official size and weight through the necropsy process,” she said. “That’s a tricky one for us in this particular instance because mountain lions do tend to exhibit cannibalistic behavior, and from the time the gentleman was attacked to when we got there, its body had already been fed on. So several of his organs and entrails were already gone.” ^ The juvenile mountain lion choked by the hiker that initially was famous was fed on by another Mountain Lion before the body could be properly analyzed. Intraspecific killing, including cannibalism and predation of each other, is the leading cause of Mountain Lion fatality:  *This image is copyright of its original author GALANTINE, S. P., AND P. K. SWIFT. 2007. Instraspecific killing among mountain lions (Puma concolor). Southwestern Naturalist 52:161–164 (from JSTOR) Quote:Pumas fell victim to infanticide, cannibalism, ungulate counterattacks, snakebites, electrocution, and plague. LOGAN, K. A., AND L. L. SWEANOR. 2001. Desert puma:evolutionary ecology and conservation of an enduring carnivore. Island Press, Washington, D.C. A female Mountain Lion killed and partially consumed by a male. Further Info: "F51, an adult female mountain lion currently tracked by Panthera’s Teton Cougar Project, meandered towards the eastern edge of her range, her two female offspring bouncing like electrons in orbit around her. Who can say what a mountain lion thinks, but from our perspective, life seemed good for F51. The family had fed off a series of elk in quick succession, and then successfully dodged the local wolf pack that stole her last kill from them. Her kittens were fat, healthy and growing fast. How quickly things can change. M85, an adult male also tracked by the project, sat on his kill at the base of spectacular red cliffs, content to move little and eat more. He heard F51’s approach—he likely heard the kittens—as she dropped through a narrow cleft in the rocks above his position, and he set out to intercept them. This much was clear, written out in the snow, but the next part involves some speculation. Perhaps M85 approached aggressively, or perhaps F51’s kittens were exposed in front of her, but whatever the scenario, she engaged him. The pair met in a storm of claws and fury, packing the snow as they rolled and wrestled. They slid down the hill about 15 feet, packing another circle of snow and leaving behind great tufts of fur. Down they slid even further, to tumble and roll yet again, the first sprinkles of blood shining ruby red on the untouched snow.Then there was a last great tumble, the pair locked tooth and claw as they slid fast and slammed into a young fir tree; the lowermost branches were snapped off in the violence. Blood and fur soaked and covered the area at the base of the trunk, where they lay long enough that their entwined bodies melted into the snow. And then she was dead, this magnificent animal, this mother of two. M85 dragged her another 20 feet before he left her. He returned to feed lightly from her carcass, but shortly after, abandoned the area completely. The kittens fled at the first signs of trouble, but are still hanging about the area, now four days later. At seven months old and without a mother, their futures are uncertain, if not bleak. Kittens typically need to be older than a year in order to survive on their own." https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/04/07/why-do-adult-cougars-kill-each-other/
Measurements and weights of adult Pumas from different regions
Book Wild Cats of the World (Mel Sunquist and Fiona Sunquist) Picture of female Puma in Torres del Paine, Chile credit to @rodrigomoragaz  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
It seems that the pumas of Chile and Canada are the largest ones recorded by scientists, with some populations in USA scratching the edge.
In the table of Sunquist & Sunquist (2002) just the males from Canada and Chile surpased the 75 kg. Searching in other sources for the web, I found two other males that reached 82 kg, the maximum that I have saw at this moment, in scientific sources. Incredible the two males are, again, from Canada (Alberta) and Chile (Patagonia), plus one male in USA (South Dakota) that almoust reached the 80 kg. Here are the documents: 1. Chilean Patagonian: https://www.researchgate.net/publication...egate_prey  *This image is copyright of its original author The heaviest of all the males are those from Chile and the largest ones is a male of 8 years old that weighed 82 kg. 2. Cypress Hills, Alberta, Canada: https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/e6...f402b9549e  *This image is copyright of its original author Huge male of 82 kg, sadly it was killed by an elk. 3. Black Hills, USA: http://mountainlion.org/publications/Pop...tation.pdf Appart from these two males, there is other record from a big male of 11 years olf recorded in the Black Hills (South Dakota, USA) that weighed 175 lb (79.4 kg), but is important to mention that in the original source (Thompson, 2009) they confused "kg" instead of "lb" in Appendix A, page 122. Jenks (2018), writing of the same study, just mention that males in the area can reach "up to about 78 kg".  *This image is copyright of its original author These are, for the moment, the largest pumas that I had found in scientific documents. If someone have bigger ones in scientific documents, feel free to share. Of course there are heavier males in hunting records, but that is another story. Greetings to all. 
 (08-07-2019, 05:25 AM)Richardrli Wrote: Did you forget this? http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/mar/07/biologist-capture-and-tag-massive-cougar-north-of-/ Thank you man, that is what I mean, we have our sources but at every moment the information is updated, at least with animals that are been captured each day. So this is the new record with 89.4 kg that I know:  *This image is copyright of its original author This animal looks big, but not as big as some other giants in the web, some of them I affraid are probably just Photoshop products. Interestingly the second largest male in the article is of 185 lb (84 kg), so with these two animals it seems that USA win the price for the biggest pumas in scientific record, for the moment. I found other records of over 90 kg, but are hunting ones and I did not mentioned here. Thanks @Richardrli for the update. Edit: Check this video. I found this link: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/largest...-527182369
Puma from North west Venezuela en la zona sur del Lago de Maracaibo
Credit to @mongabaylatam  *This image is copyright of its original author
@BorneanTiger :
About #147: yes sorry, I just come to delete the second one. More scatty than me you die... |
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