Feral cats are a threat to wildlife of all sorts. From destroying rabbit nests, catching fledgling birds, to killing squirrels and other small mammals (sometimes just for fun), cats are incredible predators. Now the giant-size version may be coming to a forest near you, as mountain lions expand their territory in a secretive way. Cheryl Dybas lets the cat out of the bag in this post from National Geographic.
The phantom, it’s been called, this big cat that now prowls western North and South America forests from the Yukon to Patagonia. It has dozens of monikers, from panther to puma to mountain lion, catamount to deer tiger to cougar. However it may be known, could the feline, long gone from the U.S. East but for an isolated Florida panther subpopulation, be on the comeback trail? Biologists are finding some surprising answers.
A clue may lie in its name. The word cougar comes from a term meaning “false deer,” a phrase coined by the Tupi. These long-ago Amazonians had an instinctive understanding of a modern scientific idea: the lives of predators (in this case, cougars) and prey (deer) are intertwined… [continued]
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