The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Columbia Encyclopedia World Factbook Columbia Gazetteer American Heritage Coll. Also known as mountain lion, catamount, panther, and painter, it ranges from S British Columbia to the southern tip of South America. The puma is slenderly built, with a lionlike face. There is great variation both in size and in color, and pumas at the extremes of their geographic range are much larger than those of the tropics.
Females are smaller.
Pumas are found in almost every type of country, including mountain tops, grasslands, deserts, and temperate and tropical forests. They are solitary hunters, preying on animals up to the size of deer. Some individuals prey on livestock, and farmers have waged extensive war on the species, which is nonetheless still numerous in Central and South America. Pumas avoid contact with humans and rarely attack them. They are classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Carnivora, family Felidae.