Cougar

The cougar, also known as the mountain lion or puma, is a large cat native to the Americas with the widest range of any wild land mammal in the Western Hemisphere, found from northern Canada to the southern Andes. It has a slender, muscular body with a small head and a plain tawny to greyish coat, and despite its size it is more closely related to smaller cats than to lions, tigers or jaguars. Cougars are solitary, largely nocturnal ambush hunters that prey mainly on deer, and they can leap great distances and heights, well suited to the varied terrain of forests, mountains, deserts and scrubland they inhabit. Though eliminated from much of eastern North America, the species overall remains classified as least concern, with stable populations in western North and South America.