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 American black bears, grizzly bears and packs of wolves. Individual home ranges depend on terrain, vegetation and abundance of prey. Cougars are territorial and live 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, but it also hunts smaller prey such as rodents. 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. It is the second-largest cat in the New World, after the jaguar ( Panthera onca). This wide range has brought it many common names, including puma, mountain lion, catamount and panther (for the Florida sub-population). It is an adaptable, generalist species, occurring in most American habitat types. 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) ( / ˈ k uː ˌ ɡ ər/, KOO-gər) is a large cat native to the Americas. Cougar range (without recent confirmations across northern Canadian territories, eastern U.S.

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