Have you been confused by jaguars, cougars, pumas, and mountain lions? If you are a Chinese speaker, you may have even bigger problems as in Chinese, the big cats' names are American tiger, American panther and American lion.

Here is a simple way to tell them apart: 

When you see a big cat –

The first clue is: does it have spotted fur?

No, it is pure tawny – it is a cougar, or puma, or mountain lion, or red tiger, or catamount, or the "American lion" in Chinese. The big cat has multiple names, in fact, it holds the Guinness record for the animal with the greatest number of names, with over 40 in English alone.

Yes, it has spotted fur – it is a jaguar, or the "American tiger/American panther" in Chinese. The jaguar looks pretty much like the leopard, but the former has a sturdier and heavier body, with shorter, stockier limbs and bigger but fewer spots.

Though the Chinese names seem to be more confusing, they do reveal one fact: both cougars and jaguars can only be found in North and South America. Comparatively, the cougar is better off as it has a wider range of habitats. The IUCN red list assesses it as of "least concern." The jaguar, on the other hand, does not live so well. It is listed as "near threatened" as the extant jaguars only appear in fragmented habitats in the Amazon Basin, Central America and Mexico. However, the numbers of both felines are decreasing, due to human activities including trapping and hunting, farming, ranching, logging, industrial constructions and pollution.

Overall, the jaguar is the biggest and strongest. The jaguar is the third-largest cat, after the tiger and the lion. The cougar ranks just below the jaguar in size and weight. Meanwhile, the jaguar totally excels at one thing: it has the strongest bite of all big cats relative to size, almost twice of the tiger, and over three times the lion (to be exact, a jaguar’s bite force is only three-quarters as strong as a tiger's bite force; but remember: the jaguar's body mass is only half of the tiger). Thanks to its strong jaw muscle, the jaguar can even crash a turtle shell. As an apex predator in the Amazon, the solitary hunter even preys on the horrific caiman.

Other tips:

1, When a jaguar meets a cougar, the ladder may yield its prey to the former. But the jaguar prefers larger prey; so conflicts are rare.

2, The cougar cannot roar, while the jaguar can.

3, There is never a reliable record of an all-black cougar. The "black panther" usually refers to black jaguar (in the Americas) or black leopard (in Asia and Africa).

4, The two species can mate. The hybrid, pumapard, grows only half the size of the parents.

5, Baby cougars have spots, too, that disappear after they grow up.

(Video clips and cover image via VCG)

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