Why cougar

This powerful predator roams the Americas, where it is also known as a panther, puma , mountain lion, and catamount. This big cat of many names is also found in many habitats, from Florida swamps to Canadian forests. Cougars like to prey on deer, though they also eat smaller animals such as coyotes, porcupines, and raccoons. They usually hunt at night or during the gloaming hours of dawn and dusk.

These cats employ a blend of stealth and power, stalking their prey until an opportunity arrives to pounce, then going for the back of the neck with a fatal bite. They will hide large carcasses and feed on them for several days. Cougars once roamed nearly all of the United States. They were prized by hunters and despised by farmers and ranchers who suffered livestock losses at their hands. Subsequently, by the dawn of the 20th century, cougars were eliminated from nearly all of their range in the Midwest and Eastern U.

Today, whitetail deer populations have rebounded over much of the cougar's former range and a few animals have appeared in more eastern states such as Missouri and Arkansas.

Some biologists believe that these big cats could eventually recolonize much of their Midwest and Eastern range—if humans allow them to do so. In most western U. Cougars require a lot of room—only a few cats can survive in a square-mile range. They are solitary and shy animals, seldom seen by humans. While they do occasionally attack people—usually children or solitary adults—statistics show that, on average, there are only four attacks and one human fatality each year in all of the U.

All rights reserved. Common Name: Cougar Mountain Lion. Scientific Name: Puma concolor. For older women who have managed to date for years without this information, Cougar is a must-read. The attribution of the term to a Canadian website "Cougardate.

I couldn't tell from a brief and yet too long visit to the website how long ago it was launched. Victoria Phillips, Confessions of a Scottsdale Cougar offers this anecdotal commentary on the term's origin:. The slang term " COUGAR " that refers to the older women who date younger men seems to have its origin in a dating Web site that featured mature women hooking up with younger men, founded by two women who were told by their nephew that the two ladies were like cougars in search of defenseless small animals and picked up the term from his mates on his hockey team.

So it is figured that the term first emerged sometime in Phillips doesn't provide any documentation to support this claimed origin, but the hockey angle is certainly consistent with the asserted Canadian origin theory mentioned by both Wikipedia and Etymology Online.

Site participant njuffa notes in a comment beneath this answer that the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine finds a webpage for CougarDate dated February 20, , with a page copyright date of The page includes a brief statement of purpose "A fun new approach to dating where women are Cougars and men are Willing Prey. My thanks to njuffa for uncovering this information. I just rewatched the movie "Trilogy of Terror".

The first episode is about a college professor played by Karen Black who preys on young men. In one scene she and her main victim come to a stop in a car. This is when you still think that SHE is the victim. The car model name shows clearly to be a "Cougar" as in Mercury. I thought that it had to be an intentional placement and a forshadowing, which implies that the term originated before ' See for yourself! Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How did cougar come to mean predatory woman? Ask Question. Asked 9 months ago.

Active 12 days ago. Viewed 2k times. The expression appears to come from Canada but its origin is still unclear as the following sources suggest: The origin of the word cougar as a slang term is debated, but it is thought to have originated in Western Canada and first appeared in print on the Canadian dating website Cougardate. Wikipedia Slang sense of "older woman plus who seeks younger males as sex partners" cougar is attested by ; said in some sources to have originated in Canada, probably from some reference to predatory feline nature.

They propose that the disappearance of cougars allowed the local mule deer population to grow unchecked, increasing browsing pressure on vegetation, and reducing the regeneration of cottonwood trees.

The loss of cottonwood and other vegetation led to increased bank erosion along the river and a decline in wildlife and plant abundance on the land and in the river. These findings add to a body of evidence indicating that the disappearance or eradication of cougars can result in catastrophic ecological changes.

The Cougar Fund works to conserve cougar populations so that they can continue to play their vital ecological role and therefore provide innumerable benefits to human society.

Habitat loss and overkill, most scientists agree, are the primary threats to the survival of cougar populations. As human populations grow ever larger and spread across the landscape, the amount of habitat available for cougars and other wildlife is shrinking and becoming increasingly fragmented.

This loss and fragmentation of cougar habitat is leading to smaller and increasingly isolated cougar populations that are therefore at a higher risk of extinction. At the same time, the number of cougars killed for sport and coming into conflict with domestic animals and humans is rising. Aside from concerns about extinction, conservation biologists also point out that reducing cougar populations below a certain level may disrupt their important ecological role and lead to declines in the health of the natural landscape and biodiversity.

In some regions the threats of habitat loss and persecution are intertwined, such as in the increasingly urbanized landscapes of the western United States. Increasing development in cougar habitat is both reducing the amount of habitat available for cougars and increasing the likelihood of cougars coming into contact with domestic animals and humans, situations that often result in the death of the cougar involved and calls for the further reduction of cougar populations.

Development can also force cougars to relocate to areas where they must compete with other cougars for home ranges. Deaths due to automobile-strikes are also becoming more common as cougars try to negotiate a landscape increasingly fragmented by roads.

Outside of National Parks and other protected areas, cougars are finding fewer and fewer places to take refuge. Thus even though history has proven cougars to be an adaptable species, it is crucial that we recognize there are limits to their capacity to survive in the face of these mounting pressures and take action to ensure their long-term survival. The Cougar Fund believes that the conservation of cougar populations and the management of cougar-human conflicts must be based on sound scientific principles.

Sport hunting of cougars is widely assumed and justified as an effective means for reducing cougar-human conflicts. Yet a comprehensive assessment of cougar research and management by thirteen leading cougar researchers and managers concluded that there is no scientific evidence that sport hunting or other predator control efforts reduce the likelihood of cougar preying on livestock or attacking humans. In fact, a study found that people in states where cougars are hunted experienced similar or even greater number of conflicts, on a per capita or unit area basis, compared to people in California where cougar hunting is prohibited.

Moreover, several states with high levels of sport hunting had a higher rate of human attacks per capita than did California. The greatest numbers of cougar attacks have occurred on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where cougar hunting is allowed.

Vancouver Island has reported more than 1. Sport hunting for cougars is a source of recreation for cougar hunters and a source of revenue for state game agencies and some local communities. The Cougar Fund believes that decisions about cougar management should serve the common interests of the public, which is the goal of public policy in a democracy, and not the special interests of a few.