The new puma will have big paw prints to fill if it decides to make its famous predecessor’s range its own. People in Los Angeles are thrilled to have another mountain lion prowling the Hollywood Hills.
When the mountain lion known as P-22 died in late 2022, people in Los Angeles were so distraught they painted murals of him on building facades, buried him after a indigenous tribal funeral and even held a festival in his honor.
The famous feline had already been the subject of books, documentaries and an iconic photograph by National Geographic’s Steve Winter. The image showed P-22 in mid-stride, perfectly centered in a small pool of light beneath the Hollywood sign in the hills of Los Angeles at night. It was a natural symbol of wildlife adapting and surviving.
The love for P-22 wasn’t only based on the incredible fact that a mountain lion had established his “range” in Griffith Park, an oasis of wilderness surrounded by urban landscapes. The puma had to cross Interstate 405 and Route 101, heavy-traffic highways that are famously lethal to his species, to get there. For the next decade he skillfully avoided cars and trucks as he went about his business, popping up on trail cameras or in the backyards of Los Angelinos.
Now there’s a potential successor to the vacant throne.
The new puma isn’t collared and wildlife experts don’t know where it came from, but like P-22 it had to cross several dangerous highways to reach the city.
It’s not clear yet if the mountain lion is male or female. Jeff Sikitch, a biologist with the National Parks Service who is part of an ongoing, decades-long study of pumas, told the Los Angeles Times that he thinks the cat is likely a young male, but there’s not much to go on so far except for witness sightings and a low-resolution video taken by a man who lives in an apartment building near the edge of Griffith Park.
“Will this cat be as skilled as P-22 was at avoiding cars for a decade?” the National Wildlife Federation’s Beth Pratt told the BBC. “We don’t know what’s going to happen here.”
The only images of the newcomer so far are grainy video stills, but Griffith Park itself has trail cameras that are used to monitor wildlife. Credit: Vladimir Polumiskov
For now, wildlife officials are waiting and watching to see if the potential puma successor puts down roots in P-22’s old hunting grounds or tries to make the dangerous trek out of the city.
If the new puma decides to stay, it will enjoy plentiful deer and a benefit most members of its species do not have — a local population that understands mountain lion attacks are extraordinarily rare, and will support them by giving them a wide berth.
On the other hand, despite the 4,000 acres of Griffith Park and the residential neighborhoods below, the cat’s inherited range would be much smaller than what’s typical for the species. Like humans cramming belongings into apartments, pumas sacrifice space when they live in or around cities.
Suzanne Pye, a local who admired P-22 from afar, said she welcomes the newcomer and isn’t worried about attacks on people. The presence of a mountain lion after almost 18 months without one prowling the hills, she said, will add “a frisson of excitement to the morning hikes.”
A close-up of P-22 in 2019, when he was briefly captured for a health check-up. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The annual tournament pitted more than 20 furry emcees against each other in a battle of rhymes and wit.
NEW YORK — Gripping the microphone in his paw, Panther the Pulverizer took aim at Buddy the Funky Feline and, when the beat dropped, launched into a blistering verse filled with punchlines about his opponent.
“You got no chance, so say sayonara,” the Pulverizer rhymed. “You’re so fat, cats thought you was a capybara!”
“My flow’s a gale, in a storm you’re supposed to bail. How you gonna carry weight when you broke the scale?” he rapped, drawing laughter from the crowd. “You’re known to fail, terrified with a bloated tail, so walk your ass home ’cause you won’t prevail!”
Hektah tha Headhunta, one half of duo Spliff an’ Wessin’, earned himself a quarterfinal berth with a raucous verse that dismantled Boss the Bocelot.
“Oh, snap!” one cat exclaimed and the all-feline crowd whooped and cheered as the Pulverizer continued his verbal assault.
The Pulverizer pressed forward, invading his opponent’s personal space as he fired the next salvo of punchlines.
“What’s wrong, lil’ Bud? Is it hard to diss us? You couldn’t move these cats if you farted citrus. Pardon it’s cause you’re avoiding this bout, knowing I’ll make you bounce like your primordial pouch.”
A collective “Dayum!” echoed throughout the crowd while the DJ doubled over with laughter. Meanwhile, Buddy sucked in his gut, suddenly self-conscious.
“My man got punchlines about primordial pouches, yo!” an approving member of the audience shouted, his tail swishing with excitement.
“Am I supposed to be intimidated? Hell no! You sound like a constipated Elmo. Truth is both my waistline and my raps are leaner,” he rhymed, gesturing toward Buddy. “While this cat runs screaming from a vacuum cleaner. Face it lil’ Bud, we ain’t rivals. You came here dead on arrival!”
The crowd roared for several seconds after the beat cut out as the Pulverizer basked in the audience’s approval.
Panther the Pulverizer, a kitty rapper from Astoria, Queens.
Buddy, dressed in oversized Tommy Hilfiger jeans, a bubble jacket and a Yankees cap turned sideways, took the mic for his turn and wasted no time launching into his retaliatory verse.
“My name’s Buddy, I’m ferocious in fights. Little known fact: also dope on the mic!” he rapped. “You’re a joke over-hyped, frozen with fright, lookin’ like a ghost you’re so white! It’s hopeless, allright? You’re a featherweight, I’m Mike Tyson tonight.”
Lay-Z is a New York-based kit hop artist who admits to an easy housecat life, with his rhymes often boasting of stainless steel bowls, palatial cat condos and fine dining on human delicacies.
“Get ’em, champ!” a supporter shouted from the crowd.
“You don’t have the balls to diss me, that’s truth in fact! I’m the real tom, you’re just a neutered cat. Your whole crew is wack, don’t even try to diss! Buddy’s a lion, you’re just a pride of wimps.”
The Pulverizer glowered as the crowd roared with laughter.
“I got fans across the world, it’s me they’re feeling, the only fans you got are spinning on your ceiling,” Buddy the Funky Feline rapped, waving a paw at the roof. “Buddy’s the illest, thats why I spit it hot. You’re full of shit like an unscooped litter box.”
“Damn! Damn, damn, damn!” host Meowthod Man of the Mew Tang Clan shouted, waving off the beat. “Let’s hear what the judges have to say!”
The judges called the battle 2-1 in favor of Buddy, granting him the split decision and sending him to the semifinals.
The Funky Feline is due to face Crouching Tiger, the highly favored big cat with a smoky voice and crisp flow. The winner of that bout will advance to the finals to battle the winner of the semifinal match pitting the Deft Leopard against MC Hektah the Headhunta.
Buddy tha Funky Feline, also known as Snackmaster Flex, is known for his vivid lyricism about life in the ‘hood and exuberant rhymes about junk food.
Buddy the Funky Feline has been the target of criticism claiming that while he rhymes about “life in the hood” as a hardscrabble stray, he actually grew up as a pampered house cat in the suburbs. He seeks to burnish his street cred ahead of his new album, Chillmatic, which is expected to break record sales when it’s released later this month. It’s the first full-length release from the New York-based kitty rapper since 2020’s Got 2 Have Turkeys and his 2021 EP, Fowl Play.
While promoting the former record during a concert stop in Tokyo, Buddy’s tour bus was infamously overturned by a crowd of screaming female fans, who pelted the bus with bras and held signs professing their love for him.
His entry into the Cat Fight 2023 battle rap tournament is meant to signal that he’s more than just a prettyboy, with an appeal beyond his massive female fanbase.
“Buddy is so kawaii, we love him,” gushed Kei Kikuno, one of Bud’s many Japanese admirers. “I just want to pinch those little cheeks!”
Nicholas was orphaned and severely injured as a cub as he and his mother tried to cross a busy highway. He’s settling into his new home, where he will have his own habitat, den and even his own pond.
Nicholas the mountain lion has a beautiful home waiting for him with his own pond, a rock den, a grassy area where he can run around and several other little hideaways where he can enjoy some privacy and naps.
But first the three-year-old puma will have to clear quarantine and become more comfortable with his new surroundings and new caretakers.
“He’s doing really well but he’s still very scared, he’s a very timid cat, so we’re just taking it really slow, day by day and the keepers are taking some quiet time with him,” said Bobbi Brink, the founder of San Diego County-based Lions, Tigers and Bears, Nicholas’ new home.
Nicholas stretches his legs in quarantine as he awaits the move to his own habitat. Credit: Lions, Tigers and Bears
The golden-coated feline with an expressive face has had a tough journey to the 93-acre sanctuary that will be his permanent home.
In 2020 when he was just a cub, Nicholas was following his mother across a busy highway when both were struck by a car. Nicholas was badly injured and his mom was killed in the collision, an unfortunately common fate for members of their species as their longtime habitats are increasingly fragmented by new developments and highways.
Because they require about two years with their mothers to learn how to survive on their own, it’s almost impossible to release orphaned pumas back into the wild. Unlike, say, the orphaned orangutans of Borneo and Sumatra, who can usually be taught to successfully fend for themselves because humans can show them how to physically manipulate their surroundings, there’s no way to teach orphaned pumas how to select prey, stalk, pounce and deliver kill bites.
A sanctuary in northern California provided a home for Nicholas for about three years, but recently went bankrupt, so the staff at Lions, Tigers and Bears secured him, prepared a habitat for him and took on the Herculean task of transporting him to San Diego County.
Nicholas’ case is even more complicated because he has lasting neurological damage from the car crash that killed his mother, including a pronounced head tilt that worsens when he’s scared.
Brink told PITB it’s normal for cats like mountain lions to be spooked by the commotion and uncertainty of a move, as well as leaving everything they know behind. Nicholas is simply obeying his wild instincts, which urge him to be guarded. But he’s got a loving team of caretakers who will work with him, as well as veterinary specialists who are well versed in caring for animals with neurological damage.
“Sometimes it can take (animals like Nicholas) a month, sometimes it can take three months to build up that trust,” Brink said. “His biggest need is he’s very afraid, so we’re gonna have to work around his fear so we don’t scare him more.”
Despite their impressive size, pumas are more closely related to domestic cats than the big cats of the panthera genus. Like their house cat cousins, pumas enjoy tearing up paper and playing with toys. Credit: Lions, Tigers and Bears
While Nicholas will have his own habitat and can keep to himself as much as he likes, recent observations of his secretive species have shown that pumas have “secret social lives,” and Nicholas will have the opportunity to meet and interact with other mountain lions if he’s comfortable with it.
Pumas — which are known by the scientific name puma concolor and are also called mountain lions, cougars, panthers, catamounts, screamers, painters, gato monte and many other names — are among the most adaptable felids in the world and range from the southernmost edge of South America to just over the Canadian border. They’re able to thrive in mountains, tropical regions, deserts, forests, human-adjacent rural areas and even in urban population centers, as the famed “Hollywood Mountain Lion” P-22 did for more than a decade in Los Angeles.
Their ability to adapt has served them well in a changing world, but they’re not immune to the pressures of human expansion.
In California their habitats have been carved up by the state’s busy and deadly highways, leaving the cats in genetically isolated pockets. Pumas who strike out in search of their own ranges are extremely vulnerable to vehicle traffic. P-22 famously crossed several of the world’s busiest highways to reach his eventual home in LA’s Griffith Park, but others like Nicholas and his mom aren’t so lucky.
Solutions like the $90 million Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, currently under construction in Los Angeles County, can connect fragmented ranges and give pumas, coyotes, foxes, deer, rabbits and other animals safe passage. But experts point out that they are just one component in a long-term solution that must include more careful zoning, fences to funnel animals toward safe crossings, and options like tunnels that run under highways, since not all animals will use overpasses.
As planners and wildlife experts figure out new ways to ensure the survival of wildlife in an increasingly crowded, human-dominated world, sanctuaries like Lions, Tigers and Bears play a crucial role by caring for the innocent animals who are injured, displaced and rescued from bad circumstances.
To learn more about Lions, Tigers and Bears or support their ongoing efforts to provide safe, stimulating and comfortable homes for wild animals, visit the non-profit’s site. To receive updates on Nicholas and the other animals at the sanctuary, follow Lions, Tigers and Bears on Instagram and Facebook. Readers who live in the California area can book guided educational tours or visit during one of the sanctuary’s special events. Thanks to Bobbi Brink and Olivia Stafford for allowing PITB to tell Nicholas’ story. All images and videos of Nicholas courtesy of Lions, Tigers and Bears.
Big cat sightings across the UK have a lot in common with UFO sightings in the US.
Shhhhh!
No one tell NewsCorp that “black pumas” don’t exist, pumas are native to the Americas, leopards are native to Africa and Asia, and a “black panther” is a color morph, not a species of cat.
A story from Fox News — prompted by a similar story in the UK’s Sun, part of the same Rupert Murdoch-owned media conglomerate — claims the British are “unnerved” by an “uptick” in sightings of cryptid big cats. The mysterious creatures are supposedly running rampant in the British countryside and in the suburbs, according to the article, which identifies them as black pumas, black panthers and black leopards.
Oddly, the story says the sightings are up significantly because there have been three “big cat” sightings in October, immediately before informing readers there are 2,000 such sightings in the UK every year.
Little Buddy and I are not exactly known for our math skills, but 2,000 sightings a year works out to 167 sightings per month, which is a lot more than three. Fifty five times more, in fact. So the story should really be about a dramatic dip in phantom big cat sightings, shouldn’t it?
What evidence does the Fox report cite for its breathless claim about big cats taking over the UK? A pair of grainy security camera videos, including one showing a “big cat sighting” at night, and the word of a “big cat sighting expert,” alternately called a “countryside expert” in other media reports, who by the way happens to be hawking a documentary on the sightings.
“It’s a crucial issue,” self-described wildcat expert Rick Minter told The Sun. “How do we come to terms with living alongside big cats in Britain?”
Pumas, also known as cougars, mountain lions, panthers and catamounts, are native to the Americas. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
For readers unfamiliar with the highest echelons of reputable journalism, The Sun is the UK’s foremost bastion of trustworthy reporting, a tabloid par excellence whose editorial staff are known for breaking stories about “crazed werewolves” and immigrants barbecuing the late queen’s swans when they weren’t running topless photos of models on Page 3. The Sun is owned by NewsCorp, the parent company of Fox News.
As for the two pieces of footage, one is the aforementioned blurry mess recorded by a home security camera at night, and shows a few frames of a cat’s behind and a tail as the felid walks out of the frame. The other is a blurry clip the credulous claim depicts a large cat feeding on a sheep. There’s no indication the figure is a felid of any type.
As far as we’re concerned, there are a few possible explanations for the sightings:
They’re former pets
India the tiger was found wandering the suburbs of Houston in 2021. In this photo, he’s enjoying life in his sanctuary’s large enclosure where he’s got plenty of room, stimulation, toys and even his own rock pool.
If there are indeed big cats roaming the British countryside and suburbs, they would have to be former pets of people who acquired them on the illegal wildlife market, broke the law by “importing” them into the UK, then broke several additional laws by keeping them as pets until the cats quickly grew and the owners realized keeping them is untenable.
Such situations aren’t unheard of, obviously, but they can’t account for a dozen big cats on the loose at any one time, much less more than a thousand as Minter claims.
More importantly, big cats who are taken from their mothers as days-old cubs, sold as pets and later dumped are universally confused, terrified and unable to fend for themselves. They end up roaming suburbia in broad daylight, like a nine-month-old tiger named India who was spotted wandering around the outskirts of Houston in 2021, sniffing out potential food in garbage cans because they don’t know how to hunt.
If these phantom big cats were former pets, they’d be spotted, captured and taken to sanctuaries within a matter of days.
They’re small wildcats formerly native to the area, like the Eurasian lynx
The problem is, the Eurasian lynx was extirpated from the UK about 1,400 years ago. There have been debates among conservationists about reintroducing wild populations to the British countryside — and to Ireland — but no concrete plans as of yet. Proponents say the lynx could be beneficial, keeping deer populations level without major human intervention.
Eurasian lynx adults can grow to about the size of medium dogs, so it’s possible they can be mistaken for “big cats” in blurry video, especially when perspective and/or lack of other objects makes it difficult to place their actual size in context. However, as with big cats, any Eurasian lynx spotted in the UK are likely to be former pets.
They’re housecats
This feral cat, a plain old member of the felis catus species, was repeatedly mistaken for a big cat in western Australia back in 2018.
If witnesses in the UK are mistaking house cats for big cats, they wouldn’t be the first.
Stories abound of little cats prompting “big cat” sightings, from Vancouver (a Savannah cat) to Scranton, Pa. (a missing house cat), to San Jose (a Maine Coon) and even Australia. (A feral cat.)
One wildlife ranger in Australia became so annoyed with fielding frequent big cat reports that he implored people to educate themselves.
“People need to get over the idea the cats are panthers,” wildlife ranger Tim Gilbertson told Australia’s ABC news. “It is just not on. They are big feral cats, at least 50% bigger than a house cat and they are powerful.”
The usual issues are in play here: Fuzzy security camera footage, night sightings, confused witnesses. You’d think there would be more phantom big cat sightings in the US, since pumas can grow to the size of jaguars and could be mistaken for lions, but people who live in areas where pumas range tend to know they’re around and what they look like. They’re also the definition of scaredy cats, reluctant to let humans spot them or get anywhere near them.
Frequently mistaken for a tiger: Buddy the Cat.
Ultimately, witness reports count don’t count for much, and not just because memory is malleable.
Thousands of people have reported seeing Bigfoot, chupacabras, the Jersey Devil and the Loch Ness monster, but those creatures are all firmly in cryptid territory.
There’s Occam’s Razor, and there’s common sense: For a primate species like Bigfoot to exist, for example, there would need to be a breeding population, enough prey for the creatures to feed themselves, and someone somewhere would have found remains at some point. (Bigfoot sightings go back to the days before Columbus set foot on New World shores, but it’s only been in the last century or so that the cryptid has entered the popular imagination via folklore and media.)
Likewise, if there are indeed 1,000 big cats prowling the British countryside, as Minter claims, there would be a breeding population, ubiquitous tracks and the remains of prey animals killed in ways consistent with big cat ambush techniques. Cats of all sizes are ambush hunters and have a distinct way of killing prey which is unlike other animals.
The UK’s big cat sightings should be treated more like the UFO sightings in the US and particularly around Area 51. They start with a kernel of potential truth — the existence of a secret base to test experimental military aircraft, or the possibility that big cats who were former pets have been let loose — which leads people to consider the possibility, then when they see something they can’t easily explain, they reach for the exceptional.
But as Carl Sagan famously said, exceptional claims require exceptional proof, and it’s no accident that things like UFOs, cryptid primates and phantom big cats only appear on the grainiest, blurriest and darkest footage.
My money is on domestic cats mistaken for their much larger cousins. Maybe Buddy’s been taking some transatlantic flights under my nose. I’ll have a little chat with him about it and ask him to kindly stop terrifying our friends across the pond.
The puma is known by more names than any other mammal, a fact that reflects its incredible resilience and wide range.
The puma goes by a lot of names. So many, in fact, that it holds the Guinness world record for the mammal with the most names, with more than 40 monikers in English alone.
Add the puma’s various appellations in Spanish and the indigenous tongues of south north America, and the large golden cat has probably had at least 100 names by a conservative estimate.
Cougar, panther, mountain lion, catamount, Florida panther, Carolina panther, ghost cat, gato monte, cuguacuarana, painter, screamer — they’re all names for puma concolor, a felid with the size of big cats in the panthera genus but genetics more closely related to non-roaring “small” cats, including felis catus.
Indeed, although pumas are famously capable of the wild cat “scream,” they’re able to purr just like house cats and their small- to medium-size wild relatives.
Why does the puma have so many monikers?
Mostly it’s because the adaptable, elusive feline has a vast range that historically covered almost the entirety of two continents:
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Even today cougars exist in healthy numbers across most of South America and the western United States. They’re wanderers, with pockets of smaller populations in places like Florida and the midwest, and individual mountain lions have been spotted as far east as New York and Connecticut. (The New York region known as the Catskills, derived from “cat creek” in Dutch, was named after pumas when the area was part of their regular range.)
Throughout their history they’ve been familiar to a diverse group of human civilizations, societies, nations and peoples, from the Aztecs, Inca and Mayans, to the indigenous tribes of North America and the First Nations of Canada, to the inhabitants of modern-day countries like the US, Panama, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
A puma with her cubs. Credit: Nicolas Lagos
But the name confusion doesn’t just stem from the puma’s many monikers bestowed by people of different cultures across space and time. The puma is also one of three cat species that are regularly called panthers. The other two, jaguars (panthera onca) and leopards (panthera pardus), are true “big cats.” That means they’re members of the genus panthera and they can roar but not purr.
Pumas are easily distinguishable from the other two: They have smooth golden fur without adornments, while jaguars and leopards both have blotches called rosettes.
It’s difficult to tell jaguars from leopards, but the biggest giveaway is the fact that jaguars have solid dot-like markings within their rosettes while leopards do not. In addition, leopards have much longer tails than jaguars or pumas, as they need the counterbalance provided by their tails to help them climb trees and balance themselves on tree limbs.
Jaguars are excellent climbers as well, but they don’t need to be as adept at living off the ground — they are the apex predators in the Americas, while leopards coexist with lions and other large animals like Cape buffalo that present a danger to the big cats even if they’re not predators.
Which brings us to our last point: Our many-named friends, the pumas, may be big and they may look dangerous, but they’re not. There have been 27 humans killed by the elusive cats in more than a century in the U.S., according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, compared to about 3,000 deaths from dog bites over the same period. Between 30 and 50 people are killed by dogs each year.
Most confrontations between humans and pumas happen when the latter are threatened and cannot escape, or when a female is protecting her cubs.
So if you live in an area where you have a chance to see these beautiful cats, admire them and keep your own kitties indoors, but don’t freak out — the puma you see one second will be gone the next.
Pain In The Bud 