The cougar goes by different names in different places: in California, people call them mountain lions; across western North America, cougars; in Florida, panthers; and in Mexico, Central and South America, pumas; all of these are names for one animal. The Cat Specialist Group says thirty-two puma subspecies have been described, but only two are now tentatively recognised.

As of November 2026, the cougar's range runs from British Columbia in Canada through the US and Central and South America to the southern tip of Chile; the cougar has the largest range of any wild land mammal in the Western Hemisphere. The Cat Specialist Group says the puma can be found in every major habitat type in the Americas, except a few densely populated coastal regions and the highest reaches of the Andes.

As of September 2026, ancient DNA analysis shows that Miracinonyx trumani, the extinct American cheetah, was a relative of the modern puma; its lineage diverged from the puma lineage roughly 2.6 million years ago. Its slender, cheetah-like body is now understood as a striking example of evolutionary convergence. A 2026 study with ancient DNA found low genetic diversity in M. trumani in Wyoming and the Yukon.

The Cat Specialist Group says males weigh 40-60% more than females and can reach weights of up to 120 kg; it also says pumas living in southern Chile and Canada weigh twice as much as pumas occurring in the tropics. Adult male cougars have a head and body length of 1020 to 1540 mm, and females 860 to 1310 mm, in the Animal Diversity Web.

As of November 2026, Florida panthers occur in peninsular Florida, primarily south of Orlando. They are solitary, except for females with kittens, and tend to be most active between dusk and dawn. The Cat Specialist Group says the Florida panther is classified as Endangered in North America.

In the 1970s and 1980s, it was estimated that only 20 to 30 panthers remained in Florida; eight female Texas panthers were brought in in the 1990s and released in Florida to breed, which increased panther numbers, genetic diversity and survival rates. The February 2017 estimate was 120 to 230 adult and subadult panthers, up from 100 to 180 in 2014. The counts do not include kittens, which are still dependent on their mothers.

Scientists put GPS collars on pumas in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the GPS device recorded the lion's location every 20 minutes; the collars also hold an accelerometer that records fine-grained data on behavior and movement. They record not only location and travels but also hunting behavior such as bursts of speed or pounces.

The National Park Service study of mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains began when the first lion, P-001, was captured on July 19, 2002. In the first 15 years, biologists captured and GPS-collared 29 adult and subadult mountain lions and used 128,133 locations to estimate home range size; only about one percent of the lion locations were in urban areas.

In the Santa Monica Mountains, adult male ranges averaged 144 square miles, about three times bigger than adult females at 52 square miles. Female cougar home ranges run from 26 to 350 square kilometers (average 140), and male ranges from 140 to 760 square kilometers (average 280). In California, females have territories up to 300 square miles and males up to 500 square miles, which can overlap with several females.

A cougar hunts mainly deer, but its diet depends on where it lives and what is there. A cougar typically makes a large catch every 7 to 10 days, and a female with kittens may hunt as often as every 3 days. A cougar stalks its food quietly before it leaps, and a cougar must get close to its prey before it ambushes from a short distance.

As of February 2015, in a Santa Cruz Mountains study, collared female pumas took an average of 67 deer per year, and males nearly 44. Female pumas in developed habitats took 36 percent more deer per year than in areas with little housing.

Cougars have especially keen eyesight, and they see better than people in dim light. A cougar can hear very high-pitched sounds.

Cougar kittens are born with spots. A cougar's spots fade as it grows and are almost gone by age 1. A mother cougar gives birth to her kittens in a den. A typical cougar litter is two to four kittens. A newborn cougar kitten weighs about one pound, and its eyes are blue when it is born. Cougar kittens are cared for by their mother for up to two years.

Young cougars leave their mother and go off to find a territory of their own. Male young cougars disperse from 23 to 274 km from where they were born, while females disperse from 9 to 140 km. Transient males in the Diablo Mountains of California traveled up to 35 miles from their areas of birth.

A 2012 study found 178 cougar confirmations in the Midwest, with confirmations steadily increasing between 1990 and 2008. The authors suggest males are leading a stepping-stone dispersal of the cougar population. One male cougar from the Black Hills was found to have traveled 2,900 kilometers before reaching Connecticut.

Words to know

• subspecies: a smaller kind
• lineage: a family line
• convergence: similar bodies
• subadult: nearly grown
• dispersal: spreading out
• solitary: alone