Puma

Where does the puma live?

Home: in mountains, forests and deserts of the Americas.

In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Chile, Argentina.

Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.

The short profile

Fully grown: 1.0–1.6 m plus a long tail. It weighs about 55 kilograms. On the menu: meat.

The story behind it

In English this one cat has more than forty names — puma, cougar, mountain lion, panther, catamount — and Guinness World Records lists it as the animal with the most names of all. The reason is simple: it lives across two continents, so almost every region invented its own word for it. A puma hunts alone, mostly at dusk; it creeps close and only runs for the last few metres. Its back legs are so strong that it can jump from standing into a tree five metres above it. It does not roar, because the hyoid bone in its throat is stiff like a house cat's, so it purrs, hisses and screams instead. Pumas keep out of people's way, and even where many of them live, hardly anybody ever sees one.

Find it on the globe

Puma is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.