Pumapardo

A cougar is a hybrid between a male puma and a female leopard.

Description

Its appearance is that of an elongated and grayish puma, with leopard spots and a tendency to be small in size, short legs and die prematurely. The breeding of pumards was interrupted around 1900 because it was considered uninteresting, since the original objective was to obtain new beasts that would enthrall visitors. Today's zoologists, however, show great interest in these cases of hybridization, since they occur between two species that are not closely related.

Distribution

For obvious distribution reasons, pumards never occur in the wild, and are rare even in captivity. The first specimens were obtained during the crossbreeding experiments between felids that became fashionable at the end of the 19th century in the zoos of several European cities, during which many other feline hybrids were obtained, such as the liger, the tigon, the leguar and the leopon. The specific case of pumards has German origins, in the Hamburg and Berlin zoos.

Conservation

Currently there are no living pumards, although several stuffed specimens are preserved, and they can be reborn with the crossing of felids.

Image gallery

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  Pumapardo, at the Rothschild Museum, Tring

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  Pumapardo, Rothschild Museum, Tring