Which is the second largest native cat species of the Americas?

The cougar is a large cat native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America, and is the widest of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. It is an adaptable, generalist species, occurring in most American habitat types. Due to its wide range, it has many names including puma, mountain lion, panther, painter and catamount.

The cougar is the second-largest cat in the New World after the jaguar. Secretive and largely solitary by nature, the cougar is properly considered both nocturnal and crepuscular, although daytime sightings do occur.

The cougar is an ambush predator that pursues a wide variety of prey. Primary food sources are ungulates, particularly deer. It also hunts species as small as insects and rodents.

Intensive hunting following European colonization of the Americas and the ongoing human development into cougar habitat has caused the cougar populations to drop in most parts of its historical range. In particular, the North American cougar is considered to have been mostly extirpated in eastern North America (the population referred to as the eastern cougar) in the beginning of the 20th century, except for the isolated Florida panther subpopulation.