Cougar Picture Showing Athletic Body

The cougar is a very athletic animal.  Although for the larger wildcats it is lightly built, the puma is a match for the leopard with respect to strength. Pumas like to bury prey and they can carry/drag their kills good distances and sometimes into trees.

It is on record that a puma in Arizona dragged a horse weighing 800 to 900 pounds 25-30 feet in the snow.

Cougar - Photo copyright Anthony Gurr on Flickr

The excellent photograph above shows the puma's unusually long hind legs. It also shows the musculature nicely. The body is taught. The long hind legs are believed to be an adaptation for jumping. The puma has a long spinal column and increased lumbar flexion while running like the cheetah.

Examples of the jumping skills and running of the puma are as follows:

1. A female, from sitting near her kill, jumped over a 2 meter (6 feet 6 inches) mesquite bush catching a vulture in mid air as it was about to land.
2. The ability to put in bursts of high speed running over several hundred yards over desert terrain.
3. The ability, on occasion, to catch the pronghorn, which is the fastest land animal in the western hemisphere and second only to the cheetah in top speed.  The pronghorn can each speeds up to 62 mph it is said by some sources.
4. The ability to jump 20 feet straight up a cliff or downhill leaps of of 30-40 feet.

Source: Wild Cats Of The World ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77999-7.

Cougar In Water

This is a really nice photograph of a Cougar in water in Brazil, South America by William Quatman. It is published on Flickr as well as here.

Photo: Copyright William Quatman.

The water is quite static it seems to me. Cougars (pumas) live in a wide range of habitats including seasonally flooded savannas. In Florida the puma is found in cypress swamps and well as other habitats (see range).

In the central-western parts of Brazil's Pantanal pumas usually use the drier habitats rather then the wetter habitats used by the jaguar.

Pumas are terrestrial but can swim and climb trees when needed. See Puma Cat for lots more and Mountain Lion Description.

Associated: Cats that like water.

Picture of a Puma in Brazil

Here is a beautiful puma (AKA cougar or mountain lion) in Brazil, specifically the Pantanal. It was taken in 2009 by photographer: Greg S. Garrett and is published on Flickr also.

Puma - Brazil - Photo by Greg S. Garrett

I find the photo very interesting. It has nice composition and a painterly quality. This is probably deliberate but Greg can explain why if he wants to in a comment!

The puma has the widest distribution of all the world's wildcats in the Western Hemisphere. The range extends in the north from well into Alaska.  In the south it extends to the southern areas of South America. The one wild cat with a larger range on the planet is the common leopard. These cats are very adaptable. The puma can live in jungle and more open areas.

The puma is probably in the top three of the world's best feline jumpers. They have great skill and power in that department. Their hind legs are unusually long providing extra leverage.

Personally I find it sad that people are still allowed to hunt this animal in the USA. No doubt the gun lobby and right wingers prevent any change to national or regional legislation.

See more about the Puma: Puma Range -- Puma Cat -- Wild Cats of the World Map.