Spotted Pumas
This photo from Keith Foster shows an adult puma with spots.
This photo from Ben Wllis shows another adult puma with spots.
When puma kittens are born their coats have prominent dark spots and they have blue eyes.
They also have stripes on the legs which can clearly be seen in this kitten. In some cases the stripes are found in adult animals (Peter Jackson in Novell & Jackson, 1993).
After a short time the eyes lose their blue colour and the spots and stripes dissapear. The adult puma's coat is uniform, except for dark spots on each side of the muzzle and dark hairs at the tip of the tail. The adult puma's lack of spots or stripes gives the animal its Latin name of Puma concolor, although the colouring the the coat is extremely variable from light throught to very dark.
Although there are often reports of black pumas and occasionally a white puma, the spotted adult puma is the only one which we are aware of.
Chris Smith
I took the spotted cougar photo from a group of photos of this
particular
cat. The photos were taken in the Big Cypress of Florida. Cougars are
sometimes spotted to greater or lesser degree of color values. Not
really
very unusual, but unusually visible in the specimen in the photo
provided.
The spots showed up better on this particular speciman because of the
very
light background coloration to its pelage. Normal coloration of coryi
is
more of the spectral value of the spots on this specimen rather than
the
lighter colored areas. Also note the odd crook in the last few inches
of
the tail, which is a genetic abberation of bent distal caudal tail
vertebrate which is a trademark of coryi from the Big Cypress
population.
This crook in the tail tip is visible externally in almost all Big
Cypress
area specimens and useful in identification of that areas puma, though
it
does exist very rarely in other locations of puma populations.The tail
of
coryi is still carried usually much lower than in the leopard, which
curl
their tail more uniformly and usually higher above the ground level.
Coryi
also have a cowlick on the back and on the neck that differ from other
subspecies usually. Another trait of coryi pelage is the incidence of
small spots of white hairs throughout the pelage that increases with
age
and is thought to be the result of tick bites and not genetics Cougars, in spite of the moniker "concolor",
are
quite variable in coloration. I have even heard of some that are
brindled,
similar to a brindled dog, but have no photos of a brindled cougar yet.
Keith Foster
Further reading
Boorer,M. (1969) Wild Cats. Hamlyn, London.
Nowell, K. and Jackson, P. (Eds) (1993) Wild Cats. Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland.
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