Why, hello, I'm Mimi Fots, and this is the episode of Hello from the Van. We're going to start today with a quiz. I'm going to name six cats. You tell me which one doesn't belong. Are we ready? Puma, mountain lion, cougar, panther, deer tiger, leopard. Which one does not belong? Let me say them again. Puma, mountain lion, cougar, panther, deer tiger, or leopard. Which one does not belong? The answer? It's the leopard. How so? Well, because all of the other names, Puma, Mountain Lion, Cougar, Panther, Deer Tiger, they are all the exact same animal. Using its scientific name, this is the Puma Concolare, and it is the topic of today's episode. Puma Concolare just means Puma with color. And for the sake of consistency, for the rest of the episode, I will refer to the Puma Concolare as its most common name used in global literature and scientific references. That is the Puma. This might not be what you grew up calling it. I grew up calling it a mountain lion because I lived next to the mountains. And that's okay. We're not calling it a mountain lion today. We're calling it a puma. The range for the Puma is very large. It covers North, Central, and South America. All of it. Its natural habitat is all the way from Canada through the United States down to the southernmost tip of South America. It is a huge range. It is the most widely distributed land mammal in the Western Hemisphere. It's actually one of the most naturally widespread mammals in the entire world. And due to its wide natural range, it has a range of different names. So many, in fact, that the puma holds the Guinness Book World Record for the animal with the greatest number of names, with over 40 in English alone. And it doesn't stop there. The puma spans 28 countries and most of the United States. And each area has its own name for the animal. In parts of Arizona, it's called a Yuma Cougar. In Florida, it can be called a deer tiger or a catamount. Catamount just stands for cat of the mountains. Yeah, catamount. In the eastern US, it's sometimes referred to as a mountain screamer or a red tiger. Basically, it's all different depending on where you live. Even within an individual state, it can have several different names. For example, in Utah, it's called a cougar or a mountain lion, depending on where you live and which college team you cheer for. But no matter where you are, it's a puma concolaire. Now here's what you need to know about pumas. They are considered an apex predator, no matter where you find them, from Canada to South America, apex predators. And even though it's an apex predator, it is not considered a large cat. It's considered a small cat by scientists. It has even sometimes been referred to as a spicy house cat due to its many similarities to domesticated cats. This is partially due to its size and partially due to the fact that the noises it makes, its hisses, purrs, and growls, are much like house cats. And much like a house cat, pumas can come in a variety of colors and sizes. Here's the interesting thing. These differences are determined by terrain and weather. Let me explain. As you get closer to the equator, pumas actually get smaller. Their coloring will change depending on whether or not they are in the mountains or a desert terrain. Basically, as a cat goes, they're very adaptable. And speaking of adaptations and colors, one thing that all pumas have in common, despite where they live or their train, is that they all have dark marks on their ears, around their snouts, and on the tip of their tails. Also, all of the babies are spotted. Other shared characteristics are that they have short legs, large paws, and their hind legs are larger and more muscular than their front legs. This is what gives them their incredible jumping power. As for their life cycle, a puma lives for about eight to ten years in the wild. In captivity, places like a zoo, they can actually live up to be 20 years old. But in wild or captivity, they are solitary cats and prefer to live alone. The males seek out other cougars during mating season. The females are the ones that raise their cubs. Female pumas are very dedicated mothers. They will spend about 75% of their lives either pregnant or nurturing and raising their young. Cougar cubs stay with their moms for about one and a half to two years before the mom will eventually abandon the cub to help them fend for themselves. When the cubs are pushed out of the den or left alone in the den with the mother abandoning it, they will sometimes stay together as a litter for protection as they learn to establish their own territories. It's the training wheels of puma adulthood. But that first year and a half with mom, it's critical. As this is when the cubs learn to avoid dangers, how to hunt, and generally how to be an outdoor cat. If their large habitat and apex nature have you anxious, let's go over how to tell if there's a puma, mountain lion, cougar, whatever we're calling it, around. According to the U.S. National Forestry Service, here's some things that you can do. Number one, look for tracks. Pumas and mountain lions have very large paws, especially on those big hind legs they have. Their markings tend to be between three to four inches wide. They retract their claws when they walk, so there's no claw marks on puma tracks. For those of you listening online, our visual podcast on YouTube has some examples of what these claws look like. Next thing you're going to do, you're going to look for scat on the trails. Scat is the scientific name for excrement feces, dookie, poop. And puma scat looks a lot like a big old human log. Due to their carnivorous nature and their size, they might have a little bit of fur in the scat, but it looks kind of human, okay? I'm gonna be completely honest. It just looks like human poop a little bit. Here's the thing about pumas. They know where humans are. Due to the size of their territory, they know where our hiking trails are. And one of the things that pumas do to communicate with humans and to say, hey, I live here, is they will poop in the middle of human trails. So if you think, oh my gosh, someone was so rude, they just pooped in the middle of this trail. And why what are they eating that there's hair in here? That's not human. That's pumascat. Basically, our trails are their litter box. Number three, look for scratch marks. Remember how I told you that pumas are related to house cats and that they have a lot of the same characteristics and habits? Well, one of the things that they do is scratch things up to mark their territory. It's the same way that a house cat will scratch its favorite chair. Pumas are a lot the same. They will scratch things up to leave marks for other pumas and for humans. And finally, number four, you are going to listen for birds at dawn and dusk. Now, when I say birds, I don't actually mean birds. I mean the bird sound that the puma makes. A lot of people are unaware that pumas make a sound like a chirp. It's their non-threatening way they communicate. It's actually the most common sound that they make. It's the ohegas of the mountain lion world. Before I play the sound for you, let me tell you a quick story. When I was a kid, I remember going on a camping trip to Yellowstone National Park with my family. And one evening we were all sitting around the campsite when we heard a bird call we had never heard before. Now it stuck out to my brothers and I because it was dark outside and there were just these birds. We could hear them. There were multiple birds and they were around us and we could not figure out. And I just remember talking to my brothers and being like, What is that bird? I've never heard a bird like that. It could be an owl, could it be this, could it be that. We couldn't figure it out. We went to bed confused. In the morning, a park ranger woke us up and informed us that there were bears and cougars sighted in the campground the evening before the mystery was solved. The park ranger informed us, yes, the sound we heard was a puma. He said it's a good sound to hear because it means that they're not threatened by you. They're just communicating. But let me play that sound for you now. Remember, this is their happy sound. It's just chatting. If you hear this next sound, this is the sound of a female puma telling the male pumas that she's in heat and ready to go on a date. It sounds a little angry, right? Very different than those first docile bird chirps that we heard. And finally, I'm going to play for you some angry kitty sounds. If you hear these sounds, that means that there is an angry puma around. If you hear those sounds that I just played, that means the puma doesn't want you to be there. So here's what you can do. According to the Forest Service, don't run, okay? We're not gonna run from the spicy house cats. You run and you can trigger the cat's prey drive. Here's what that means. Have you ever played with a house cat? With a piece of string, sometimes with a feather on it. Yeah, that's what you look like to a mountain lion when you start running, okay? Don't be a feather on a string. You wanna be big. You are going to turn towards that puma. You are going to make eye contact. You are going to stare into that puma's soul, and you are gonna say, get out, cat! You're gonna make yourself bigger. Keep eye contact, make yourself bigger, and start walking backwards. And finally, if it attacks you, fight. There are some animals that you're gonna play dead. A puma, not one of them. You're gonna fight it. You're gonna fight that cat! But that's um, statistically, a very, very, very, very, very small chance. Let's talk about those statistics. There have been only 29 cases of fatal mountain lion attacks on humans in North America since 1868. Yes, only 29 cases. This is an average of 0.18 attacks per year. For context, each year in the US, on average, 777 people die from mosquito-borne illnesses. You are more likely to die from a mosquito than from a puma. 28 people each year are struck by lightning. You have a much larger chance of being struck by lightning in the wilderness than you do of being attacked by a puma. It's not really something to worry about. Mountain lions are not a major public safety risk. These are just spicy house cats. Even according to the Mountain Lion Foundation, being loud and aggressive is the best way to avoid an attack entirely. And with that, may you have happy trails and lots of hiking in front of you. I'm Mimi Fotz, and this has been another episode of Hello from the Van.