Cats of the Americas
Puma vs Jaguar
They share a continent and often the same forests, yet one belongs to the roaring big cats and the other, despite its size, does not.
At a glance
- The jaguar averages about 1.3 times the body mass of the puma.
- Both species use tropical rainforest.
- Their ranges both include North America and South America.
- Red List categories differ: Puma is listed as Least Concern, Jaguar as Near Threatened.
Family matters
The jaguar is a member of the genus Panthera and can roar. The puma, despite reaching a similar shoulder height, sits on the small-cat side of the family tree: it purrs, chirps and screams but has no roaring anatomy. Its closest living relatives are the jaguarundi and the cheetah.
Shape reflects that split. Jaguars are stocky, broad-headed and short-limbed; pumas are long-limbed and lightly built, with the largest hind legs relative to body size of any American cat.
Sharing a landscape
Where both occur, they partition prey and habitat. Jaguars take heavier, more armoured animals near water — capybara, peccary, caiman — while pumas concentrate on deer and smaller mammals and range further into dry, open and high-altitude terrain.
The puma's tolerance is the wider of the two. It occupies desert, boreal forest, Andean páramo and coastal rainforest, giving it the largest latitudinal range of any land mammal in the Western Hemisphere.
Conservation contrast
Their Red List categories differ, and the reason is instructive. The puma is listed as Least Concern because of its vast range, even though eastern North American populations were wiped out. The jaguar is Near Threatened and has lost roughly half of its historical range, with the losses concentrated at the northern and southern edges.
What to take away
- Jaguars roar; pumas cannot, despite comparable size.
- Where they overlap, jaguars take larger, water-associated prey and pumas take deer.
- Both remain widespread, but the jaguar has lost far more of its historical range.
Identification
How each species is named and classified.
Puma
Puma concolor
Jaguar
Panthera onca
Puma
Puma
Jaguar
Panthera
Puma
Puma lineage
Jaguar
Panthera lineage
Puma
Big cats
Jaguar
Big cats
Puma
Mountain lion, Cougar, Panther, Catamount
Jaguar
El tigre, Onça-pintada
Body and movement
Published field measurements for adults. Ranges cover both sexes unless noted.
Puma
3 ft 3 in – 6 ft 7 in (100–200 cm) Longer
Jaguar
3 ft 7 in – 6 ft 1 in (110–185 cm)
Puma
24 in – 3 ft 1 in (60–95 cm) Longer
Jaguar
18 in – 2 ft 6 in (45–75 cm)
Puma
24 in – 2 ft 11 in (60–90 cm) Taller
Jaguar
2 ft 1 in – 2 ft 6 in (63–76 cm)
Puma
64–220 lb (29–100 kg)
Males 53–100 kg, females 29–64 kg; animals near the equator are smaller than those at high latitudes.
Jaguar
99–265 lb (45–120 kg) Heavier
Pantanal males are the heaviest; Central American animals are markedly smaller.
Puma
50 mph (80 km/h)
Short accelerations from cover rather than sustained pursuit.
Jaguar
50 mph (80 km/h)
Brief sprints only; jaguars are ambush hunters in dense cover.
Life span
Typical adult longevity. Figures for managed care come from zoo and sanctuary records.
Puma
8–13 years
Jaguar
12–15 years Longer
Puma
18–21 years
Jaguar
20–23 years Longer
Habitat and range
Where each species lives and the conditions it tolerates.
Puma
montane forest, temperate forest, tropical rainforest, desert, semi-arid scrub, grassland
Almost any terrain that offers stalking cover and ungulate prey, from coastal rainforest and Rocky Mountain conifer to Sonoran desert, Patagonian steppe and Andean páramo above 13,000 feet.
Jaguar
tropical rainforest, wetland, dry forest, mangrove, savanna
Strongly associated with water: floodplains, riverine forest, seasonally flooded grassland and swamp forest support the highest densities recorded for the species.
Puma
North America, South America
From British Columbia and Alberta south through the western United States, Mexico and Central America to Chile and Argentina. A small, isolated population persists in southern Florida.
Jaguar
North America, South America
From northern Mexico — with occasional records in Arizona and New Mexico — through Central America to northern Argentina. The Amazon basin and the Pantanal hold the largest remaining populations.
Diet and behaviour
Feeding ecology, social organisation and hunting technique.
Puma
medium ungulates, small mammals, hares, birds
Deer dominate across most of the range, supplemented by elk calves, guanaco, vicuña, peccary, porcupines, hares and rodents.
Jaguar
medium ungulates, reptiles, small mammals, fish
Capybara, peccary, caiman, giant anteater, armadillo, turtles and fish. More than eighty prey species have been recorded across the range.
Puma
Solitary
Adults hold large, scent-marked ranges; recent GPS work shows more tolerance and even occasional food sharing between neighbours than was long assumed.
Jaguar
Solitary
Adults hold overlapping home ranges and communicate through scrapes, scent marking and a sawing call. Extended male associations have been documented in the Pantanal, which is unusual for the species.
Puma
Crepuscular and nocturnal
Movement peaks at dawn and dusk, matching deer activity, and shifts further into the night close to roads and settlement.
Jaguar
Cathemeral, peaking at dawn and dusk
Activity shifts with prey and disturbance; jaguars in undisturbed wetlands often hunt in daylight, while those near settlements become largely nocturnal.
Puma
Stalk, pounce and cache
A puma approaches under cover, launches from short range and kills with a bite to the neck, then drags the carcass to a cache site and returns over several nights.
Jaguar
Ambush with a skull-piercing bite
Jaguars stalk close, often from water or dense vegetation, and frequently attack from above or behind. Caiman and turtles are killed with a direct bite through bone or shell.
Puma
Exceptional More developed
Climbs quickly and confidently, often treeing to escape wolves or dogs and to rest above the ground.
Jaguar
Strong
Confident climbers that rest and ambush from branches, though they cache prey on the ground far more often than leopards do.
Puma
Capable
Swims when necessary, including between coastal islands, but generally avoids water.
Jaguar
Exceptional More developed
Jaguars swim across major rivers, hunt in shallow water and have been filmed diving after caiman.
Conservation
Red List category, population direction and the pressures documented for each species.
Puma
LC — Least Concern
Assessed 2015
Jaguar
NT — Near Threatened
Assessed 2017
Puma
Decreasing
Jaguar
Decreasing
Puma
Habitat fragmentation by roads and development, Vehicle collisions, Retaliatory killing after livestock loss, Prey depletion, Genetic isolation of small populations
Secure at the species level thanks to a huge range, but eastern North American populations were extirpated, and the Florida panther depends on active genetic and habitat management.
Jaguar
Deforestation for pasture and soy, Retaliatory killing by ranchers, Trade in teeth and other parts, Prey depletion, Road and dam construction
Still widespread in Amazonia, but the species has been lost from roughly half its historical range, with severe fragmentation in Mexico, Central America, the Atlantic Forest and the Argentine Chaco.
Notable traits
Details that do not fit neatly into a measurement table.
Puma
- The species holds one of the longest lists of English common names of any mammal, a legacy of its enormous range.
- Vertical leaps of more than fifteen feet from a standing position have been documented.
- Highway crossing structures in California and Florida were built specifically to reconnect isolated puma populations.
Jaguar
- Melanistic jaguars — the so-called black panthers of the Americas — still carry rosettes, visible in raking light.
- The Pantanal supports some of the highest jaguar densities recorded anywhere, and its animals are the heaviest on average.
- Jaguars are one of the few cats known to prey routinely on large reptiles, including adult caiman.
Sources used for this comparison
- IUCN Red List of Threatened Species Global assessment categories, population trends and documented threats.
- IUCN SSC Cat Specialist Group Species accounts, distribution notes and Cat News reporting for every wild felid.
- Panthera Field research programmes and species profiles for big and small wild cats.
- U.S. National Park Service Long-running monitoring of North American carnivores inside protected areas.
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Federal listing status and recovery planning for cats occurring in the United States.
- Wildlife Conservation Society Field programmes, camera-trap surveys and population monitoring.