Characteristics

There are two principal characteristics to look for in identifying a cougar: A uniform (concolor means “of one color”) tawny, grey-brown or red-brown coat, and a very long tail.

Cougars’ haunches demonstrate nature’s exquisite design: The cat’s rear limbs are slightly longer than the fore, enabling cougar to leap both vertically and horizontally. The cat’s head is relatively small with green to amber eyes set close together to maximize visual acuity and distance sight. (In contrast, deer’s eyes are set far apart, to take in maximum peripheral information such as predators and other threats.) Muscular yet somewhat short, stocky limbs lead to large paws with retractable claws. Capable of climbing, cougars will resort to trees to flee from danger, wolves, and dogs. Cougars’ paw prints (pug marks) do not show claws but four toes with a characteristic tri-lobed heel pad. Cougars are not great distance runners or excellent sprinters (as is the cheetah) but lope at a fairly even, long-striding pace. Their long tail is used to counter-balance their graceful movements.

While cougar kittens are born with spots and black rings on their tails, the spots fade to dapples at around 9 months old, with all signs of dapples disappearing from the pelage by age 24-30 months, roughly the time when the cubs reach sexual maturity.

Male cougars are around 40% heavier than females, maxing out around 150 pounds versus 105 pounds for females. Determining the sex of a cat in the field is difficult to the point of being controversial. Some cougar sport hunters, believing they are killing a trophy-sized male cougar, often misidentify males for females. The thrill of the chase, the size perspective variable of a treed cougar, and anxious, paying, time-strapped hunting clients and outfitters are just a few of the factors that result in a female kill rate of 47% across the 12 states where cougars are legally killed for sport. Males may be accurately identified by a spot of black guard hairs indicating the penile sheath or, more subtly, whitish silver hairs on the scrotum.

Cougar sightings in the wild are extremely rare and are also frequently misidentified as well. One study in Oregon found that only 7% of more than 800 cougar incident reports made to the Fish and Gamer Department in a 30-month period could be confirmed or substantiated. In other cases, animals ranging from very large housecats to yellow Labrador retrievers to even deer were mistaken for cougars when reports were followed up on by officials.

Cougars are obligate, opportunistic carnivores, meaning that their diet is principally meat—they eat mainly deer and elk but are adept at hunting porcupines as well. One cougar consumes roughly one deer every week to ten days, possibly more if it is a mother raising cubs. Solitary hunters, cougars depend on stalking and ambush, tactics employed to take down prey often 7 times their size.