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I’m going to give you all a brief, merciful break from my terrifyingly awkward fiction to give you a tour of my horribly rambly nonfiction.  Today’s subject, in addition, is one which I’m less than well-versed in, yet something we all enjoy: KITTIES! 

Except we’ll be looking at all the kitties that are big enough to kill and eat you. 

Admit it, it’s more interesting that way.  We’ll be doing this in order of rough body size, because that’s the way real manly insecure men do things. 

The Cougar/Catamount/American Lion/Mountain Lion/Puma/Panther (Puma concolor)

Yes, that’s all just one species.  Cougars are the largest cats in North America (115-198 pounds for males 64-141 lbs for females, 60 to 76 centimetres at the shoulder).  In the incredibly informal lumping of the Felids (the taxonomical Family of the KITTIES, in case you were an ignorant lout and didn’t know this – hence, “feline”) into the twi groups of the “big cats” and “small cats,” cougars are technically “small cats” – the requirements aren’t size, but membership in the high-falutin’ and exclusive genus of Panthera.  A more literal interpretation of “big cat” adds in the cougar, snow leopard, and cheetah, but that’s newfangled and therefore for those tiresome young people that keep yapping on about saving the whales. 
Cougars are solitary, bar when they’re raising their kittens, which, of course, are extremely adorable (a solitary cat – my GOODNESS GRACIOUS AND BEANS).  They’ve lived over almost every inch of both the Americas, from tip to top, although now for some strange reason totally unconnected with testy land-hogging plains apes with gunpowder weaponry they’re inexplicably scarce across a lot of their former range.  In particular, the Eastern seaboard is pretty cougar-less – a far cry from the old days (which hasn’t stifled the odd sighting or sign of them – there may very well be mountain lions about there again, if in small numbers.  That reminds me of the time what possibly could have been a cougar studied our cat with avid curiosity from about thirty feet away in our backyard before idly trotting away, but hey, back to the topic at hand here….KITTIES). 

Being as far-ranging as cougars are (or were) naturally means flexibility, with regards to habitat, food, and just general adaptiveness overall.  They eat deer, birds, small mammals, bighorn sheep, cattle, horses, even a moose now and then or insects – whatever there is lying about at the time.  This requires a fair amount of individualized learning and experience; dump a South American cougar into the Yukon, and it would be highly puzzled on meeting a moose.  Nothing really returns the cougars the favour – bears, wolves, jaguars, alligators and caimans alike may share the top predator position, or even exceed the cougar’s claim, but they don’t particularly seek out and eat them as a matter of course.  As a rule of thumb, few predators enjoy the prospect of hunting down something that’s very likely to hurt them, and other apex predators are seldom meek and willy prey.  Speaking of which and turning back to the point above, cougars are fairly unlikely to go for humans – they rely on learned prey recognition, something that usually isn’t formed for us in particular.  They’re most likely to attack if they’re starving or feel threatened – and even then,  they prefer to go for children, with their usual method of downing prey: a bite right in the neck.  Attacks like that are almost always fatal.  Scientists say it’s probably because of the canines severing your spinal cord, or your vertebrae crunching, or windpipe collapse, jugular spurting apart, or something else sciencey like that. 

 

The Leopard (Panthera pardus)

The smallest of the “big cats” of Panthera, the leopard is part of an exclusive club – this older, more restricted definition of the group is also deemed the “four who can roar.”  That’s right, outside the Panthera big cats, not a single kitty can roar (although they scarcely need that to alarm you – cougars have a scream that resembles a woman’s, just the thing to put you to sleep on a lonely night in the wilderness).  Speaking of the cougar, despite occupying opposing continents, the leopard isn’t all that different from it in quite a few ways – it’s lean rather than bulky, and it’s approximately the same size, maybe a little bigger (45-80 centimetres at the shoulder, 82-200 pounds – for males, which are about 30% bigger than females).  They can also produce runty, messed-up hybrid offspring called pumapards, but back to the leopard here.  Its legs are a tad stubby for its body length (to keep from getting tangled up in branches and such), and it’s got a pretty powerful and massive set of jaws on it for its size.  This, incidentally, works well with its after-hunting strategy, where it often drags deceased prey up a tree for safe keeping – the only cat known to do this, and all the more impressive when you realize some of the things it eats are up to thrice its weight.  If you find a gazelle dangling from some branches somewhere, go away before you piss off its owner.  They’re even more far-ranging than cougars, and can be found from Subsaharan Africa all the way into Southeast Asia in scattered populations. 

Leopards share with jaguars an interesting little habit of occasionally cropping up melanistic rather than spotted – or, to put it more plainly, black.  It’s most common in rain forests and mountainous areas, where it possibly allows slightly better blending-in.  “Black panthers” like these are still spotted, but it’s very hard to make out the markings against their darkened “un-spotted” fur.  On a more humanitarian note, leopards are less likely to go for humans than their larger neighbours, but when they do (via those good ol’ pair of reasons: age or injury forcing them to easy prey) they are regarded as absolutely terrifying – smaller and stealthier than lions or tigers, but just as dangerous and much, much bolder, thinking nothing of waltzing straight into a settlement and yanking someone out in the middle of the night. 

 

The Jaguar (Panthera onca)

The third largest kitty on the planet, the jaguar gets a bit less publicity than the lion and tiger (hey, the three biggest cats live on three different continents – there’s some shallow and meaningless meaning there).  It’s got a lot of variation in size – females are 10-20% smaller than males, which meander from 67-76 cm at the shoulder on average, and weights can vary from scrawny (80 lbs) to average variation (124-211 lbs) to as big as a female tiger or lion (350 lbs!).  A large part of it seems to be regional – jaguars from along the Mexican Pacific coast are around as big as cougars, but those in parts of Brazil average over 220 pounds and elder males can end up over 300 lbs without being freaks. As to body build, jaguars are quite different from the svelte and agile cougars and leopards we’ve examined thus far – they’re built thick and powerful, with additional appropriate words being “robust,” “stocky,” and “compact” (unacceptable phrases include “midgetized,” “badger-like,” and “thicker than mother’s oatmeal”), which makes them good swimmers and climbers in the rainforests of South America.  Its bite is incredibly powerful, and if adjusted for body size may be greater than any other felid’s – which may have something to do with its habit of noshing on turtles now and then, to say nothing of armadillos, caimans, and occasionally even an anaconda or two. 

The Jaguar’s killing method is also noteworthy – no other kitty uses something quite like it.  They take their prey’s head in those big crusher jaws of theirs, and then bite right into the brain – something that’s thought to have a connection with cracking turtle shells.  They tend to use this most often on mammallian prey – but no need to fear.  Of all the big cats, the jaguar has the least human deaths on its conscience, and all of those are either from aged and near-helpless specimens that couldn’t catch anything else or aggressive self-defense.  A final note on its patterning – jaguars, unlike leopards, have small spots inside their “rosette” markings – and leopards have rounder and smaller rosettes. 

 

The Lion, or “The King of Beasts” according to twits (Panthera leo)

Definitely the most well-known and overrated of all the big cats, the so-called “king of beasts” is only the second-largest, although it’s the tallest at the shoulder.  It’s also among the most visually distinctive, thanks to the impressive manes the males sport.  Unusually for kitties, lions are social animals.  Size-wise, males meander from 330-550 lbs, females 264-400 pounds, with shoulder heights of 4 foot and 3 foot 6 inches respectively.  As is becoming common, these measurements depend largely on environment – both local habitat and global location.  Other notable lion characteristics include nice long canines (8 centimetres), strong legs, burly jowly jaws, tufted tails (unique among kitties), and oh yeah, that huge honking head of hair the males get.  Lion manes make them look much more intimidating when confronting hyenas or each other, but they also make the males as well-camouflaged as a bowl of white rice and tofu in a candy factory.  This is why the big lazy bastards let the females do all the hunting for them.  AND THEN THEY REFUSE TO LET THEM EAT FIRST. 

The exact target of the lioness’s hunts varies, again, with region, but lions in general eat mostly large mammals – they’re big animals, and most of the time they’re hunting not just for themselves and their fellow huntresses but for those big, selfish, greedy chauvinist pigs back home too.  They tend to avoid prey outside the weight range of roughly 420-1210 pounds – smaller, and it’s often not worth hunting, bigger, and it’s liable to get very dangerous – but there are exceptions to this.  The lions of Kruger National Park go for giraffes quite often, and the lions of Chobe Park in northern Botswana make a virtual habit out of going for the park’s elephants – the largest concentration in Africa.  Apparently they started resorting to calves when times grew tough, then moved on to adolescents and even adults, all done at night, when they can’t see it coming as well as they should. 
Whatever they’re hunting, lionesses are usually in wide-open areas with good sightlines, making it essential that they work together to bring down prey that could very well see them coming.  The favored execution method of lions is suffocation via clamping those big jaws around something’s windpipe and slowly throttling it to death, unless it’s small enough to have its spine swatted apart.  Few creatures can return the favour; spotted hyenas have high dietary overlap with lions and are often in competition with them, but lions are simply too big to be bullied unless they’re alone – rather rare for a social species.  Leopards, cheetahs, and African wild dogs are even more easily dismissed, bullied, and occasionally eaten.  The one predator on the African continent that can make a lion wary is a Nile crocodile; a lion might be able to handle one out of the water, but it’d be a rare and stupid crocodile that’d let itself be caught so easily, and it’d better be a small one.  A lion that’s unfortunate enough to run into a crocodile in its element is very unlikely to make it out alive. 
As a final note, lions are indeed more than willing to eat humans – provided the motivation is there.  Again, the old saw of “if-it-is-sick-or-injured” comes into play, but more important yet may be the amount of prey available.  If humans are moving into the area, and humans and their livestock are now more prevelant than bush species, then hey, what do you think the lions are going to eat?  As said previously, lions won’t hesitate to modify their diet according to regional peculiarities, and if this particular peculiarity is “there’s no more wildebeest and lots of chattering plains apes,” so be it. 

Oh, and when a male lion takes over a pride, he often kills all the cubs so the females get horny again and can have HIS kids rather than some other guy’s.  You know what?  This asshole deserves the title of King of Beasts.  Perfectly. 

 

The Tiger (Panthera tigris)

The tiger is both the largest cat of all and possibly the most visually distinctive – fie upon your manes, they have magnificently striped sides!  Body size varies wildly – there are seven remaining subspecies of tiger, ranging from the (relatively) “small” Sumatran tiger (220-310 lbs for males, 170-240 lbs for female – an adaptation to Sumatra’s dense forests) to the positively enormous Siberian tiger (males 43 inches at the shoulder and 420-670 lbs, females 220-370 pounds).  Tigers could be found all across Asia before the 19th century, but nowadays they’ve vanished from Western Asia and aren’t exactly numerous anywhere, even their most favored of old stomping grounds.  Their most distinctive features are extremely powerful legs that let them bring down animals much larger than themselves, and of course, their stripes, which tend to average somewhere around one hundred an animal. 

Tigers hunt like most big cats – stalking and then pouncing, with massive bursts of speed that can only last for a brief time.  Water buffalo, deer, tapirs, gaur, and all manner of large prey are brought down like a lion – neck-biting and slow suffocation.  Smaller prey typically has its neck bitten, or possibly a whack with a paw – which can crush the skulls of cattle with one shot.  Other predators for the most part stay the hell away from tigers – even crocodiles won’t chance a confrontation often, and tigers are more at home in the water than any other kitty.  Sloth bears can harass adolescent tigers, but adults prey upon them with ease, wolves have been found to steer clear of tiger territory, and the dhole (or “red dog”) of India, while occasionally capable of mobbing a tiger over food in big groups, usually does so only at risking losing massive numbers.  Even brown bears fare no better than fifty/fifty against Siberian tigers in Russia, with the two species stealing kills and young from each other, and occasionally Siberian tigers there will actively prey even on adult bears.  You know you’re dealing with a hardcore predator when now and then it will decide it wants to eat a mature brown bear. 
Tigers are responsible for more human deaths than any other cat, but show no real preference for humans as prey whatsoever.  Most man-eating tigers are sick, old, have broken teeth, or some combination of the above.  In some cases, it’s believed sufficient exposure to the concept via human carrion can cause tigers to register people as “food, of a sort.”  Interestingly enough, man-eating tigers are among the most timid of all man-eating big cats – seldom venturing into villages or settlements, and almost never going for anyone that isn’t alone.  Even something so trivial as being spotted before an attack can be made may be enough to forstall them.  This in no way has prevented them for racking up truly epic individual bodycounts – and in one case, the bengal tigers of the Sundarbans, an entire population of tigers is noteworthy for using humans as a secondary food source.  Theories on their renowned tetchiness range from having to constantly drink saltwater to inability to properly mark territory due to constant flooding to habituation towards human flesh thanks to frequent death tolls from hurricanes and tsunamis in the region.  Plus, the Sundarban tigers are approximately 500 in number, and are one of the largest single tiger populations in the world, which is a high density of large, aggressive kitties. 

 

Things we’ve missed include cheetahs, lynxes, bobcats, wildcats, ocelots, and much more.  Ah well, I’m sure they’ll turn up in good time. 

 

OH SHIT THEY’RE RIGHT BEHIND YOU.

 

Picture Credits:

• Sleepy cat: Public domain image from Wikipedia, taken January 9th 2009 by “David.”
• Lions and a Zebra: Wikipedia Commons, taken December 09, 2005 at 11:21 by Jeffrey Sohn. 
• Cougar: Public domain image from Wikipedia, from USDA National Wildlife Research Center media archives.
• Cougar Kittens: Public domain image from Wikipedia, taken by WL Miller. 
• Leopard on a tree: Public domain image from Wikipedia, from U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 
• Black Leopard: Wikipedia Commons,  from the Out of Africa Wildlife Park in Camp Verde, Arizona, uploaded by Qilinmon at en.Wikipedia. 
• Sitting Jaguar: Wikipedia Commons, October 6 2006, Milwaukee County Zoological Gardens, by en:User:Cburnett. 
• Yawning Jaguar: Wikipedia Commons, August 19 2007, Toronto Zoo, Marcus Obal.
• Lion waiting in Nambia: Wikipedia Commons, 26 July 2004, yaaaay. 
• Lion cub with mother in the Serengeti: Wikipedia Commons, Tanzania 2007, David Dennis. 
• Sumatraanse Tiger: Public domain image from Wikipedia, August 30 2007, Dick Mudde. 
• Tigeress with cubs: Public domain image from Wikipedia, March 11 2008, Kanha National Tiger reserve of central India, Wikigringo.