Puma, as in mountain lion? You know, I hadn’t considered that possibility. I really need an education on what cats you have down there. As for Murphy’s Law, my favorite is “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all”.

I love Little Miss Sunshine!

Hello Cinchino and Wilson it’s so great to have this wonderful blog. Fernando I love the way you write - very entertaining. I can tell already that this is going to be a fun blog!

Dear Theresa you are correct! Puma is another common name to the mountain lion. Indeed they are two different subspecies of Puma concolor. Another subspecie is the cougar in Canada. Hera we also call it suçuarana that is the indian name. I loved your Murphy`s Law citation! I will use it!

Hi Dipesh!!!
Isn`t that a nice movie? Really funny! It is impossible to not remenber it using a VW-T2 to work!

very interesting, I was amazed by the amount of forest lost to deforestation. I hope you are successful in creating corridors to connect these forest patches so the jaguars are no longer isolated and can roam. Is the major threat to jaguars habitat loss or are they hunted/poached as well ? I look forward to future posts and pictures from the camera traps.

Thank you Paula!
I will send your regards to Cicinho and Wilson, they are really nice guys! Hope everybody enjoy our adventures on our neverending search for wildcats!

Thank you for your field report! I´m sure that you will get great photos, not only from jaguars and other wild cats, but also from a varied wildlife. I´m specting to see some picture of a mountain lion of that area, there are a few photos of them in the wild in Brazil, and they have some quite different characteristics in size and even colour when compared with other specimens from others parts of their range. In fact, the puma or mountain lion is the most widespread of the big cats in America, ranging from Alaska to the southermost tip of Sudamerica, with all the subspecies that such a great range implies. Certainly the puma, mountain lion or cougar, is one of the most adaptable of the big cats, living in deserts, forests, mountains, coastal zones, etc, and hunting in a wide range of prey. It would be extremely interesting if you manage to do some research in this sp. while doing the work on jaguars, because there is so few field works in South America on this species. Thank you so much for your hard work there, I can´t wait for your photos!!

F.J., your excitement is contagious. I know mountain lions can leap further then any cat. Just as servals can leap the highest. Pound for pound, I think the jaguar is the strongest off all cats, am I right? What about the jacarundi, the fishing cat, and the marguay, are they found in Brazil? Yes, I could talk all night about these felines…and never get bored.

Dear Theresa, The jaguarundi and the margay can be found in some countries in Latin America. Both of them can be encountered in Brazil, and in the case of the jaguarundi, even in some parts of the U.S. The fishing cat is an endangered species as well, but is only found in some asiatic countries. The mountain lion has this well deserved fame of perform fantastic leaps, not only in lenght, but in high as well. About the proportionatelly strongest feline, I think leopard can have that honor. Leopards can take the carcass of a prey that weight twice (or even more) than themselves and put it several metres high in a tree branch. Leopards bear this behavior in order to protect their meal from others predators, and have evolved this impressing neck and shoulders muscles that help them in doing this, even they have a special bone joint in the back paws (very like that in margays and clouded leopards) that also help them when climbing a tree with extra weight. Lions, tigers and jaguars do not have the need to take their preys into trees because they do not have any natural competitors in their range that really impose a danger to them. For other part, I´m just remembering one spectacular episode involving a male leopard, when I was in Etosha National Park, Namibia. He perform the most incredible leap that I have ever seen in person from a big cat in his habitat, almost 7 meters from the top of a rock outcrop to the ground, followed by a really big engagement with a troop of baboons!! I can tell you about that story when ever you want!

Yikes, baboons can kill a leopard, their teeth are awesome. Please tell me your story, I hope this leopard survived. Living close to Big Cat Rescue, I have had the honor to see all these beautiful cats, except the jaguar. The most peculiar cat there is the Sand Cat, native to the deserts in Iraq, only weighs 5-6 pounds and is both feisty and adorable!

Yes, the sand cat is native from the Middle East area, and is considered as a threatened species. It eats lizards, snakes, rodents and every other little animal that can be hunted, including insects and those marvellous arachnids: scorpions. This species has a very interesting evolutive process, some experts think that this cat evolved from a relict population of the euroasiatic wildcat adapting to desert and semi-desert conditions some thousands of years ago, others mantain the theory that it is a totally different species since the very begining. Interesting, isn´t it?

Hi Mr. Pechir,
Thank you for your regards!!! I am very confident that we will get nice photos, we selected real good places with recent pumas and ocelots footprints. You are absolutely correct about the puma. Indeed we have data from few animals monitored by radio telemetry. The data already collected suggest that no more than thirty pumas of the endangered Puma concolor capricornensis remain in Pontal do Paranapanema. Unfortunately are not easy to use capture-recapture models with camera traps as we can do with other spotted species (e.g. jaguars and ocelots). However we can monitor the status of the species. As you told the cougar is one of most adaptable of the big cats, resisting to habitat changes and living close to human communities. But also because of that the number of domestic animals predation by the specie is extremely high and is a great challenge to us to deal with this. Keep in contact, hope to post good news soon!

Dear Theresa,
I just had written to Mr. Pechir and need to confess that I am very impressed by all your knowledge on cat species! Yes, the jaguar has the strongest jaw off all cats and can break the neck of a tapir. Here in Pontal we have the jaguar (Panthera onca), the ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), the jaguarondi (Herpailurus yaguarondi) and the margay (Leopardus wiedii). There is very few information on the small cats and they are my focus right now. I still hoping to find the oncilla (Leopardus tigrinus) and the pampas cat (Oncifelis colocolo), it would be a great discovery! Our surveys with the cameras are been specially designed to small cats with small distances between the stations and very close to the ground. Let’s see what we get!

Hi Mr. Pechir,
What nice experiences you have! Your descriptions and knowledge on wildcats natural history are impressive!

Thank you for your kind comments!! Certainly, a picture or two of a oncilla o tigrillo will be just spectacular because of the rarity of this species, and a photo in its natural habitat would be surely part of my personal collection! I have to say exactly the same about the pampas cat! What an interesting blog you have! Thank you.

Boy, I’m sure learning a lot here, thanks guys!