Puma

A

Home Ranges

Pumas establish home ranges, or territories, primarily for breeding purposes. A male puma’s home range typically encompasses the ranges of one or more females. The home ranges of females may overlap extensively, but the home ranges of males only occasionally overlap.

The size of puma home ranges vary, from as small as 30 sq km (12 sq mi) to as large as 1,030 sq km (398 sq mi). The territories of males are several times larger than those of females. The density of puma populations depends largely on the availability of prey.

A female puma usually holds her home range for life, but a male may be ousted from his home range by another male. Only males will replace males and only females will replace females in established home ranges. Some pumas are transients and will travel widely in search of a vacancy. Transients will replace a resident puma when it dies.

B

Communication

Pumas mark their territory by making scrapes and scat mounds. Males make nearly all of the scrapes, which are scratches or marks made by pushing the hind feet backward in soil, leaf litter, or snow. The scrapes sometimes include the puma’s feces or urine. Females make nearly all of the scat mounds, burying their feces in piles of earth and debris about 1 m (3 ft) in diameter. The mounds are often made near kills and prominent trees. Neither sex sprays urine, unlike all other cats.

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The puma has a distinctive caterwaul (yowl), likened to a blood-curdling human scream. Rarely heard, it is the only long-distance call of the puma and seems to be associated with courtship. Pumas often communicate with shrill, high-pitched whistles. They also growl, squeak, mew, hiss, and spit. The puma cannot roar like the lion or leopard, lacking the enlarged vocal folds and elastic hyoid bone (U-shaped bone positioned at the base of the tongue) of the big cats. It does purr like the smaller cats.

C

Pumas and Prey

Pumas are adaptable predators. They kill and eat mammals ranging in size from mice to moose, depending on what is available. Deer are the puma’s favored prey. Mule deer, white-tailed deer, and black-tailed deer are found in North America, where they make up more than 60 percent of the puma’s diet. Pumas also hunt larger prey such as moose, wapiti (American elk), and bighorn sheep. Pumas find several species of deer in South America, including guemals, pudus (dwarf deer), brocket deer, and marsh deer.

In southwestern Florida, where deer are few in number, pumas eat wild hogs, raccoons, and armadillos. In Idaho’s Salmon River wilderness, pumas feast on ground squirrels during summer, when the rodents are numerous. Pumas found in tropical regions prey mostly on small mammals, including rodents such as viscachas, pacas, and porcupines. In southern Chile, guanacos and European hares are the puma’s major prey. Pumas kill and eat livestock as well, including sheep, cattle, and horses.

With its powerful hind legs, the puma can put on a high-speed sprint. But the puma usually relies on ambushing its prey, rather than chasing it down. Pumas use tall grass, bushes, boulders, and rocky crevices as stalking cover. Pumas often attack their prey from above, jumping down from a cliff or other high spot. After taking down their prey, pumas usually make the kill with a bite to the throat, causing the victim to suffocate. When hunting larger prey such as moose, a puma may leap on its victim’s back and break its neck with a bite just below the base of the skull.

The puma will drag the carcass of a kill to a sheltered spot and eat its fill. The puma then covers the remains with leaves and debris and returns for additional meals until the carcass is completely consumed. Pumas do not share their kills with other pumas, except mothers with their young. An adult puma needs to kill a large deer every 10 to 16 days to feed itself. But an adult female needs to make a deer kill every 9 days if she has 3-month-old kittens, and every 3 days if she has nearly mature kittens.

V

Pumas and Their Young

Pumas have no set breeding season. Females usually do not breed until they have secured a home range. A female gives birth after a gestation period of about three months. In North America, most births occur in late winter and early spring. The birth den is a concealed and protected place, such as a thicket or a shallow cave. The number of young in a litter ranges from one to six, but is usually three or four.

Puma kittens nurse until they are 2 or 3 months old. They begin to accompany the mother on hunts at about 6 months. They usually do not become independent until they are at least a year old. At this time littermates begin spending more time alone, but they may remain together for a few months longer in their mother’s home range.

The young pumas eventually disperse to stake out their own territory. Males often travel extensively in search of a home range and may spend several months in the process. Males travel an average of 100 km (60 mi), and sometimes much farther, from their mother’s home range. Females tend to establish home ranges near their mother’s range, and small enclaves of related females are common.

VI

Pumas and People

Pumas rarely confront or attack people. Usually a gentle and retiring cat, the puma is more likely to flee than fight. However, pumas have come into increasing contact with people as more people settle in remote areas and use national and state parks. With increased contact, eventually pumas may lose their fear of people.

Pumas have disappeared or become very rare wherever people have settled. As European colonists settled across North America, pumas became subject to intensive hunting and eradication programs. Human settlement involved widespread deforestation, destroying many areas of the puma’s habitat. Deer, the puma’s primary prey, became scarce in some areas due to overhunting by people. By the early 20th century, pumas had almost completely disappeared from the eastern part of the continent, and their numbers were greatly reduced elsewhere.

Today, pumas are one of the few large predators that can be legally hunted in North America. In Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Peru, government regulates puma hunting, limiting the number of pumas that hunters may kill. All other countries in the Americas—except for Ecuador, El Salvador, and Guyana—prohibit the hunting of pumas.

In the United States, the regulated hunting of pumas is allowed in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Only Texas allows the unrestricted killing of pumas. Pumas may not be hunted at all in South Dakota, California, and Florida.

Sport hunting is a major cause of puma deaths in the United States, accounting for 20 to 50 percent of the cat’s annual mortality rate. Hunters can legally use dogs to track down pumas, which are then easily shot down when they climb trees in flight.

Where the hunting of pumas is allowed, the sport is viewed as a way of reducing the puma’s impact on ranching. As ranchers have taken over puma habitat for raising livestock, pumas have taken to preying on sheep, calves, and foals. Ranchers across the Americas have long viewed pumas as a threat to their livestock. In the United States, pumas known to kill livestock can be eliminated as pests under the Animal Damage Control Act, which was passed in 1931.

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