Mountain lion vs the wolf. What happens when these two animals meet in the wild? Both animals share the same habitat and hunt for food aggressively. While they usually ignore one another, they have been reported fighting one another over food, or just because they are forced to be in the same territory.
The cougar, commonly known as the puma, mountain lion, or panther, is North America's second-largest cat. The cougar, unlike other large cats, cannot roar. Instead, the big cat purrs like a domestic cat.
The gray wolf, sometimes known as the timber wolf, is the largest wild member of the Canidae dog family. It can be found across most of the Northern Hemisphere. Several thousand years ago, wolves were domesticated, and dogs were developed through selective breeding.
Size and Appearance
Cougars are Felidae members who are lean and agile. Adults stand between 24 and 35 inches tall at the shoulders, making them the world's fourth largest cat species. Adult males average 7 ft 10 inches from snout to tail tip, while females average 6 ft 9 inches, with overall ranges given for the species of 4 ft 11 inches to 9 ft from nose to tail. The tail usually accounts for 25 to 37 inches of this total length. Males range in weight from 53 to 100 kg, with an average of 68 kg. Females normally weigh between 29 and 64 kilos, with an average of 55 kg. Cougar size decreases as you get closer to the equator and increases as you get closer to the poles.
The wolf is the largest living member of the Canidae family, with a broad snout, shorter ears, a shorter torso, and a longer tail that distinguishes it from coyotes and jackals. It is slender and powerfully built, with a large, deeply descending rib cage, a sloping back, and a heavily muscled neck. A typical northern male may be about 6.6 feet long, including a bushy half-meter-long tail. It is 30 to 33 inches tall at the shoulder and weighs 45 kilos.
| Cougar | Wolf |
Weight | Avg. male: 68 kg, avg. female: 55kg | 45kgs |
Height | 24-35 inches | 30-33 inches |
Habitat
In America, the cougar has the widest range of any wild land animal. Its range stretches from Canada's northern Yukon Territory to the southern Andes, covering 110 degrees of latitude. Its extensive distribution is due to its capacity to adapt to practically every habitat type; it may be found in all types of forests, lowland and mountainous deserts, and open places with minimal vegetation. It loves steep canyons, escarpments, rim rocks, and dense undergrowth in the Santa Ana Mountains.
Wolf populations are primarily found in wilderness and remote regions. The wolf can be found between sea level and 9,800 ft. Forests, inland wetlands, shrublands, meadows, pastures, deserts, and rocky summits on mountains are all home to wolves.
Competition in Wild
The cougar has few natural enemies and is at the top of the food chain. They do, however, occasionally compete for food with other predators such as bears and wolves. a massive grizzly bear appears dominant, often able to drive a cougar off their kills. During the winter, the gray wolf and the cougar compete more directly for prey. Wolves can steal cougar kills, and there have been known instances of wolves killing cougars. Conversely, one-to-one confrontations tend to be dominated by the cat, and there are various documented accounts where wolves have been ambushed and killed, including adult male specimens.
Wolves often outnumber other canid species in locations where they coexist. Wolves killing coyotes is widespread in North America, especially during the winter, when coyotes graze on wolf kills. Brown bears often outnumber wolf packs in corpse disputes, but wolf packs typically outnumber bears while protecting den sites. Both species prey on each other's offspring. Brown bears seem to eat only young wolves, while wolves devour the brown bears they kill. Because of their different ecological preferences, wolf-American black bear encounters are extremely unusual. Wolves have been observed actively pursuing American black bears in their dens and killing them without eating them on several occasions.
Diet
The cougar is a successful generalist predator, eating anything it can catch, from insects to huge ungulates. Mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, and even bull moose are among its most common prey species, which are particularly abundant in North America. Bighorn and Dall's sheep, feral horses, fallow deer, caribou, mountain goats, coyotes, American badgers, and pronghorns are among the other animals hunted. Elk, followed by mule deer, were the cougar's principal prey, according to investigations in Yellowstone National Park.
The wolf, like all land mammals that hunt in packs, feeds mostly on wild herbivorous hoofed animals that are classified as large 240 to 650 kg or medium 23 to 130 kg, and have a body mass similar to the pack's aggregate mass. A wolf pack of 15 can bring down an adult moose, and they specialize in preying on the vulnerable members of large prey. Elk, moose, caribou, white-tailed deer, and mule deer are all important range-wide prey in North America. Rodents, hares, insectivores, and smaller carnivores are examples of smaller creatures that could augment their diet. They eat ducks and their eggs regularly. When these meals are scarce, they eat lizards, snakes, frogs, and huge insects when they are available.
Cougar vs Wolf - Final Thoughts
Now it’s time for the fight! An alpha male wolf meets a cougar male in a wilderness in the north of the United States. What will happen?
Given their habits and the fact that wolves live in packs, a cougar would undoubtedly lose if faced with an entire pack of wolves. Although being a lone wolf is the most vulnerable stage of the Wolf's life, they are remarkably capable of hunting alone.
Cats have larger fangs, flexible paws, and retractable claws, which make them ideal for an ambush. On the other hand, Dogs have stiff legs with gripping claws, longer snouts with trapping and crushing teeth, and large lungs, making them ideal for endurance chasing. They're designed to kill prey in a variety of ways so that competition amongst them is minimized. In a one-on-one fight, a cat has an edge because it has strong, agile paws and claws that can both restrain prey while biting and inflict harm by striking. It also contains teeth that are sharper for cutting meat. Cats evolved to be the most effective land predators, and they're built to win almost every time they face up against canids. In prehistoric times, at one point cats almost drove dogs to extinction, but dogs survived by adapting pack behavior.
Canines aren't built for one-on-one combat with predators of equal size. An adult cougar is slightly larger and heavier than an adult wolf. Because it can climb trees, its physique is more powerful and agile. The main advantage of the wolf is its stronger biting force and, possibly, an equally powerful but relatively stiff physique. The cougar, on the other hand, nearly always wins because it is a calculated animal with a superior fighting style.
This method entails positioning itself beneath the wolf and biting its throat, effectively ending the struggle. This behavior has led those who have witnessed a wolf-cat battle to believe that the wolf had the upper hand at first but eventually lost control, when in fact the cat had the upper hand all along. If the puma gets its jaws on the throat of the timber wolf, then it is over. So, in a one-on-one, the cat has a great chance of winning even we must admit.
Unless the wolf is exceptionally adept and intelligent in dealing with cats, the cat will always have the upper hand due to its paws and habit of living alone. Cats always dominate dogs in weight battles, even if the cat is slightly smaller. In this case, they aren't even close to equal weight; cougars are significantly bigger on average than wolves.