My favourite animal: The Cougar

It's was very difficult to decide wich was my favourite animal, I really don't have one favourite animal, I think that I have like 10 favourites animals. But then I thought that a lot of my 10 favourites animals are felines, so I decide to choose one of them. I really loooooove felines, all of them, they are so beautiful and agiles, and of course that I have a cat at home. Between all the felines I decide that my favourite feline is the Puma.

The Cougar, also called puma, is a mammal of the family Felidae found in North, Central and South America. It's the second heaviest cat in the American continents after the jaguar. Although large, the cougar is most closely related to smaller felines, because they don't roar but they can purr, therefore they are considered as small cats.

They are slender and agile cats. Their head is round and they have their ears erect. They also have powerfull forequarters wich serve to grasp and hold large prey. They have 5 retractable claws on it forepaws and just 4 on its hindpaws. Cougars are tawny colored with black-tipped ears and tail. They can run as fast as 50 km/h to 72 km/h and jump 6 m from a standing position. Cougar kittens have brownish-blackish spots and rings on their tails.

Their life span is about a decade in the wild and 25 years or more in captivity. Cougars that live closest to the equator are the smallest and increase in size in populations closer to the poles.

They eat a lot of differents animals, even insects. Its most important prey are: mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk and even large mooses, also domestic animals such as domestic horses, cattle and sheeps. Like almost all felines, the puma is a solitary animal. Only mothers and kittens live in groups, with adults meeting only to mate.

The Cougar has the largest range of any wild land animal in the Americas. Its wide distribution stems from its adaptability to every habitat type: it is found in all forest type as well as in lowland and mountainous deserts. Studies shows that they prefer regions with dense underbrush but can live with little vegetation in open areas.

The Puma is considered the largest cat in Chile. In the past, the Puma inhabited the entire national territory excluding the desert in the north, Chiloé Island, the archipelago of Chonos and the antartic territoy. Now, due to the continuous increase of human colonization, its distribution has been reduced by mountain areas and foothillds of both the coast and the Andes, and those areas that are relatively remote from human activity. Their most important prey is the hare and guanaco, also they also attack domestic animals like sheeps, therefore they were hunted a few years ago. The Puma is currently protected by law and its rated in Chile as a vulnerable specie.

I like Pumas because they are beautiful feline and they're very agile, and it's the biggest feline that we have in Chile, and it is one of the species in our country that we have to protect and look after them. And the most important thing is that they can purr!! and I love that from cats, and I find so sweet that they can also do that.

There are many national parks in Chile where we preserve many species of animals and plants, and the Puma it's one of this animals. I would like to help them, and I think that one good way is having this parks. The only and first time that I saw a Puma was in the national park "Alerce Andino". I went there with my family on our "mobile home", and we stayed for a night there (that's forbidden, but we did it anyway ... it was an idea from my father) and in the night we saw a puma very near to our home, he was smelling our things and he stayed for a while. So the idea from my father wasn't bad at all and the man that was looking after this park didn't realize that we stayed there anyway. It was great!