Talk:Cougar

Semi-protected edit request on 5 October 2025

Please update the end of the third paragraph under "Relationships with humans > Attacks on humans > In North America" to include the fatal attack in Oregon in 2018.

Proposed edit:

"Washington state was the site of a fatal attack in 2018, its first since 1924.[122] Later in 2018, a hiker was fatally attacked in the Mount Hood National Forest, marking Oregon's first fatal cougar attack in the wild. [153][154] Lightly populated New Mexico reported an attack in 2008, the first there since 1974.[123]"

References:

153 ^ Zach Urness (September 11, 2018) Oregon's first fatal cougar attack in the wild claims hiker near Mount Hood, Statesman Journal.

154 ^ Courtney Flatt (September 21, 2018) Wildlife Officials Conclude They Killed The Cougar Responsible For Hiker's Death, OPB. Archived from the original on September 22, 2018. Retrieved on October 5, 2025. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Meeshiefeet (talk • contribs) 18:59, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 October 2025

Remove Panther. Panthera is a different genus than Puma. 149.154.1.92 (talk) 02:39, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: While Panthera is a different genus, cougars are commonly referred to as panthers. Day Creature (talk) 02:47, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Subfamily missing

The genus Puma belongs also to the subfamily Felinae rather than just to the Felidae family. This is missing within the infobox. Axzyr (talk) 12:47, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

@Axzyr: This is intentional. We list minor taxa ranks from the article's subject up to the next major rank, and then generally only minor ranks. As this is a species article, the next major rank is genus, so above there we list only major ranks. - UtherSRG (talk) 15:36, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

I see, thank you for the clarification. Axzyr (talk) 16:00, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

@UtherSRG:, can you clarify? From reading your post it sounds as though the "rule" for species infoboxes is:

-minor ranks above species and below genus may be included;

-minor ranks above genus and below family may not be included;

-minor ranks anywhere above family may be included.

I was inclined to assume you accidentally wrote "minor" when you meant "major", but I see that infraclass is included in this article's infobox, plus several other species articles I looked at also included minor ranks that were above family. Thanks, HierophantOfOmens (talk) 06:28, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I meant major. The caveat to all of this is that the whole automatic system can denote specific taxa as "always display". - In solidarity, UtherSRG (talk) 13:34, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't think infraclass should be displayed, but I haven't bothered to address it yet. That is a relatively recent change initiated by an editor who has a history of making poorly thought out changes to the taxonomy templates. Infraclass Marsupialia has long been displayed in marsupial articles. Marsupials were formerly treated as an order, but were elevated to an infraclass and split into multiple orders. People are more likely to be familiar with marsupial than the current orders, so I think there is a good reason to display Marsupialia. It does not follow that Placentalia then should also be displayed. Plantdrew (talk) 15:42, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

The automatic taxobox displays the following:

• The immediate parent in the hierarchy regardless of rank.
• The major ranks: Genus, Family, Order, Class, Phylum/Division, Kingdom
• Ranks where the taxonomy template has |always_display=yes

In addition you can specify the number of immediate parents to display in the taxobox using |display_parents=integer number. I used |display_parents=2 in the cougar species box so it displays two immediate parents (Genus, Subfamily).  —  Jts1882 | talk  13:50, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Yes, but should you have done that? Subfamilies are typically only displayed in this manner when the article's topic includes the genus. This article is about a species and not about the genus. - In solidarity, UtherSRG (talk) 17:52, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

I think so. The subfamily is an important divisions for cats, so I'd support using |always_display=yes in the taxonomy templates if this was raised. There are over 43,000 articles using {{speciesbox}} and |display_parents=N so it's not unusual.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:02, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure of that, so I reverted it, but I will not edit war. Do editors really need to do this for all species that are in subfamilies? Getting a consensus for that would be better in my opinion. Jako96 (talk) 13:28, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

You don't revert edits when they are still being discussed. On another matter, your tagging taxonomy templates for deletion seems like a deliberate effort to make it difficult to revert your changes, which for some reason many editors find a need to do. Best to leave the templates until there are stable changes.  —  Jts1882 | talk  13:39, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

No, I do not tag templates to make it more difficult to revert. Previously, there was no agreement to keep Diatomeae, by the way. I changed it to unranked clade Bacillariophyta when the classification dropped. Although I can see there are good reasons why you think like that. Jako96 (talk) 13:47, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

No, not all. Hence why the standard is to not have them displayed, while the system is flexible enough to manually display them when there is consensus to do so. - In solidarity, UtherSRG (talk) 13:44, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Sure, editors do seem to do this for species as kind of a tradition. As I said, I'm not willing to war it. Jako96 (talk) 13:48, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Fair. This does seem like one of the cases where the subfamily is an important distinction. - In solidarity, UtherSRG (talk) 13:42, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Do you think always displaying subfamilies in Felidae could be better? Jako96 (talk) 13:52, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

No. For most species, I don't think there is any value in doing so. There are two subfamilies:

• Pantherinae - essentially the "big cats" though this is not a best fit term. None of the species here need the subfamily in the taxobox as they are all larger cats.
• Felinae - essentially the "small cats". I think putting the subfamily on the larger members of this subfamily would be informative, while putting it on the smaller members would not be. Of the lineages in this subfamily, I'd easily support using the subfamily in the taxobox of the Puma lineage species: cheetah, jaguarundi, and cougar. I could probably be persuaded to support such for two other lineages: the Caracal and Lynx lineages. These species are large enough that indicating the subfamily would be valuable. Likely there are some few species in other lineages that could fall into this logic.

- In solidarity, UtherSRG (talk) 14:21, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

I can live with that compromise as I was thinking the puma being a "small cat" was significant.  —  Jts1882 | talk  15:34, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Display parents should be used very sparingly. In general, taxonomy templates should be set to always display rather than using ad-hoc display parents in taxon articles. However, consensus should be sought to set always display.

In this particular case (coupled with the "Stupid Phrasing" thread below) there is some logic to using display parents rather than always display for the "large small cats" in Felinae. Plantdrew (talk) 18:50, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Stupid Phrasing

"is a large small cat native to the Americas". A large small cat? That's the best that you guys could come up with? Why not just say a medium sized cat or basically anything but what's there already? That way Wikipedia can fulfill it's purpose without looking stupid. A large small cat....even saying a small large cat would be better since saying "Big cats" is commonplace. ~2026-20459-58 (talk) 17:04, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

It is a bit of an unfortunate turn of phrase, but “large” and “small” here are in different semantic domains, so to speak. “Large” refers to size in the ordinary way, but “small” refers to lineage (as distinct from the “big cats” you mention): cougars are more closely related to e.g. bobcats than e.g. leopards, despite appearing more similar to the latter in size & shape. Can you suggest a better way to express this concisely? Perhaps … is a large member of the small-cat family native to …? Or omit “large” from the first clause, instead pointing out the size shortly afterward?—Odysseus1479 19:12, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 April 2026

Change "lineages migrated across the Bering land bridge into the Americas 8 to 8.5 million years ago million years ago" to "lineages migrated across the Bering land bridge into the Americas 8 to 8.5 million years ago" (to remove the double of 'million years ago') ~2026-20639-41 (talk) 21:23, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

 Done; the duplication was not apparent in the wikitext, the first instance coming from the {{Ma}} template.—Odysseus1479 21:37, 3 April 2026 (UTC)