The puma (Puma concolor since 1993, previously Felis concolor) is a type of feline (cat) found in North, Central, and South America. Though large in size this cat cannot roar, but instead purrs and has even been said to make eerily humanlike screams when courting. It is more closely related to the common house cat than to the four "big cats", the tiger, lion, jaguar and leopard. It is also known by the regional names of cougar, mountain lion, panther, catamount, painter, American lion, Mexican lion, Florida panther, silver lion, red lion, red panther, red tiger, brown tiger, deer tiger, ghost cat, mountain screamer, Indian devil, sneak cat, king cat, and painted cat. The word puma comes from the Quechua language. In Brazil it is also known as suçuarana, from the Tupi language, but also has other names. In fact in the English language the puma has over 40 different names.

In North America, particularly the United States, panther by itself refers to a puma when the context implies a local species, although the term black panther is correctly associated only with the melanistic variants of leopards or jaguars rather than pumas. In Europe and Asia, panther means leopard and can refer to either the spotted or black leopard. In South America, panther refers to the jaguar and can refer to either the spotted or black jaguar. The melanistic gene can be seen in a variety of cats, including the lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, caracal, jaguarundi, serval, ocelot, margay, bobcat, lynx, and Geoffroy's Cat; however, melanism has never been documented in Puma concolor, although urban legends of "black panthers" persist. Such anecdotal accounts are particularly prominent in the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, a region where P. concolor is accepted as having been wholly extirpated by the late 1800's, and where breeding populations have not been documented as re-established by 2005.

Recent DNA analysis has established that the puma is supposedly quite closely related to the jaguarundi and North American cheetah (Miracinonyx, now extinct), but not to true cheetahs. The puma is not closely related to other large felines, such as leopards and lions.

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