A cougar was photographed near Southwest Portland last weekend, while I slumbered in the woods. It was seen in a residential area. I was camping among thousands in the woods so I was more in danger from the sun and maybe brown recluse spiders than one lone mountain lion, but I prefer my first sentence for the drama!
Speaking of this large member of a favorite fellow creature family, there are an estimated 6000 cougers in Oregon
From the San Diego Zoo website:
“Mountain lion, puma, cougar, panther—this cat is known by more names than just about any other mammal! But no matter what you call it, it’s still the same cat, Puma concolor, the largest of the small cat species.”
“The mystery of the small cat: Like the unicorn, small cats have been the stuff of legends. Many of these cats have never been studied in their natural habitats, which are often in rugged, remote areas. Some small cats are active only at night, making it hard for researchers to study them. Until recently, the bay cat of Borneo was known to exist only in stories and identified by a few skins in museums; it was not studied in the wild until the late 1990s! There are reports of a cat known only as the onza, from Mexico, which may be related to the mountain lion. It is as big as a mountain lion but more slender. Scientists have only seen one, which had been killed by hunters.
There is also the Iriomote cat (named for the small Japanese island near Taiwan where it lives), which was only discovered by scientists in 1965. It has been declared a national treasure by the government of Japan, but there may be fewer than 100 of these cats left. And have you ever heard of the kodkod? Only people who really know small cats can say they have, and almost nothing is known about this cat, native to a small area of Chile and Argentina.
Surprisingly, some of the “small cats” are rather large, like the mountain lion (sometimes called a puma or cougar), which most people think of as one of the big cats. Zoologists group cats by certain physical features, not really by size. Here’s what they look for:
Roar or purr? The group of small cats cannot roar like the big cats do, because the bones in their throat are hardened and close together and can only produce smaller vibrations. Instead, they mew, scream, and growl. Anyone with a house cat knows that small cats can purr nonstop whether they are breathing in or out, but big cats can’t purr continuously; they can only purr when they breathe out, and the purr is interrupted when the cat breathes in. As a result, some big cats make a noise keepers refer to as a “chuffle.”
Eyes: The pupils of small cats close to a vertical slit, while the pupils of big cats close to a circle, like a human’s pupil.
Nose: Small cats have a strip of leathery skin across the top of their nose, directly above the wet tip. On big cats, this area is covered with fur.
Resting: Big cats prefer to stretch out when they rest, but small cats like to curl up with their paws tucked underneath and their tail wrapped around their body.
I’d include a picture, but I am wary of copywriter and I don’t have any pictures of a mountain lion of my own. Well, not exactly.
Thanks!! I feel so much wiser now! :- )