#pumas!

[justcatposts]

🔥 A gorgeous little puma cub checking out a wildlife cam 🔥

(Source)

[classycookiexo]

[maxidango]

a bunch of retro ladies

[nin-ei]

A couple of pieces I’ve done this year (Available on inprint!)

[choscar-op81]

[maastrichtiana]

the mountain lions are unwittingly practicing witchcraft to improve their hunting chances and leaving patches of terra preta behind

[tysonfurybattlepass]

cats of all types and sizes are god’s perfect killing machines and i can only hope and dream to achieve the raw athletic potential and destructive force that felids are capable of. all while looking like :3

[sitting-on-me-bum]

A puma rests on a rock where mountains meet the sea in the Chilean Patagonia. 2022.

(Photo: Nicolas Lagos /Panthera Nicolas Lagos)

[snototter]

A cougar cub (Puma concolor) in the North Carolina Zoo, USA

by ucumari photography

[maxidango]

buncha random doodles

[tsalala]

A portrait of Nemesis, also known as Waya Torres del Paine, Patagonia, Chile Photographed by Benjamin Valenzuela Wallis

[wayward-delver]

I made a discovery...

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Is the gene that makes housecats black/solid the same gene that makes panthers black?

Depends on the species! Leopards have a recessive ASIP mutation just like housecats, but jaguars have a dominant MC1R mutation, the same gene that makes yellow/red variants in a lot of animals. Gain of function MC1R mutations are (co)dominant and make the animal produce more eumelanin, loss of function mutations are recessive and result in more phaeomelanin. (For ASIP, it's the opposite.)

Both genes are responsible for melanism in several felids:

ASIP: domestic cat, leopard, asian golden cat, pampas cat, kodkod

MC1R: jaguar, jaguarundi*, geoffroy's cat

*This one is interesting, because the reddish variant seems to be the original and the more common dark is the later mutation.

And the species with still unknown genetics: serval, oncilla, marbled cat, bobcat, southern tigrina, margay, jungle cat, african golden cat, african wild cat**

**Technically i think it's possible that the melanism of domestic cats is a direct heritage of the african wildcats from before domestication OR that the melanism of african wildcats is an evidence of crossbreeding with domestic cats; either way they would have the same ASIP mutation.