Other names include "panther", "painter" and "catamount". In the western United States and Canada, it is also called "mountain lion", a name first used in writing in 1858. The first use of puma in English dates to 1777, introduced from Spanish, and prior from the Quechua language in the 16th century, where it means "powerful". The term puma is also sometimes used in the United States.
"Puma" is the common name used in Latin America and most parts of Europe. In 1774, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon converted cuguacu ara to cuguar, which was later modified to "cougar" in English. Cuguacu ara was then adopted by John Ray in 1693. Marcgrave's rendering was reproduced in 1648 by his associate Willem Piso. In the 17th century, Georg Marcgrave named it cuguacu ara. The word cougar is borrowed from the Portuguese çuçuarana, via French it was originally derived from the Tupi language. In particular, the eastern cougar population is considered to have been mostly extirpated in eastern North America in the beginning of the 20th century, with the exception of the isolated Florida panther subpopulation. Intensive hunting following European colonization of the Americas and ongoing human development into cougar habitat has caused the cougar populations to drop in most parts of its historical range. Fatal attacks on humans are rare, but increased in North America, as more people entered cougar habitat and built farms. It is reclusive and mostly avoids people. While large, it is not always the apex predator in its range, yielding prey it has killed to jaguars, American black bears, grizzly bears, packs of wolves or coyotes, and (in Florida) to American alligators. Individual home ranges depend on terrain, vegetation and abundance of prey. The cougar is territorial and lives at low population densities. It prefers habitats with dense underbrush and rocky areas for stalking, but also lives in open areas. Primary food sources are ungulates, particularly deer. The cougar is an ambush predator that pursues a wide variety of prey. Despite its size, the cougar is more closely related to smaller felines, including the domestic cat ( Felis catus) than to any species of the subfamily Pantherinae. Secretive and largely solitary by nature, the cougar is properly considered both nocturnal and crepuscular, although daytime sightings do occur. The cougar is the second-largest cat in the New World after the jaguar ( Panthera onca). Due to its wide range, it has many names, including puma, mountain lion, catamount, panther and painter. It is an adaptable, generalist species, occurring in most American habitat types. Native to the Americas, its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. The cougar ( Puma concolor) is a large cat of the subfamily Felinae. Cougar range (without recent confirmations across northern Canadian territories, eastern U.S.
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