The answer to that question is yes. The Mountain lion and the bobcat are both native to the mountain state. According to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, the mountain lion is extinct in the state. See, Today, the bobcat is West Virginia’s only existing wild cat species. They, along with West Virginia’s official state animal, black bears, are among the state’s top predators.
There are several reports of black panthers being sighted in different locations in the mountains of West Virginia every year. We’ll talk a little bit about that towards the bottom of the article.
Bobcats in West Virginia (Lynx rufus)
Bobcats are exclusively a North American wild cat and are also the most common wild cat species in North America.
Some other names for the bobcat are bay lynx, red lynx, and swamp devil.
Biologists believe that both the bobcat and the Canada lynx are descendants of the Eurasian lynx, and their ancestors crossed into North America via the Bearing Sea land bridge.
Where do bobcats live?
These small wild cats live in three North American countries. Their range begins in southern Canada and then extends south through most of the United States and down into central Mexico.
Compared to Canadian lynx, which thrive in deep snow country, bobcats struggle more in the snow due to the fact that they cannot walk on top of it like lynx can. A lynx’s huge paws function like snowshoes keeping it on the snow’s surface. On the other hand, compared to lynxes, bobcats have small feet that tend to sink into the snow. Bobcat tracks are about half as wide as lynx tracks. If the snow is too deep and powdery, it reduces their mobility along with their ability to catch prey.
These cats are mostly crepuscular or nocturnal animals, but it’s not uncommon to see one out and about in the daytime because they only sleep for 2 to 3 hours at a time.
Bobcats are solitary animals with the exceptions of during mating season or when a female is raising young. They are territorial and live in home ranges that they patrol and scent mark with urine and feces.
The size of bobcat home ranges varies with the geography and the availability of food items. However, in West Virginia, the average size of a female bobcat’s home ranges is about 1 square mile. On the other hand, male bobcats may have a home range of up to 20 square miles. See
One more thing about home ranges is that adult males and adult females sometimes have overlapping ranges.
What do bobcats look like?
An adult bobcat is about twice the size of a domestic cat. A domestic cat has a longer tail than a bobcat, though. Bobcats are 2 to 4 feet long with proportionately long legs.
Male West Virginia bobcats are roughly 39 inches in length and weigh 20 to 30 pounds. On the other hand, females weigh 15 to 25 pounds.
These animals have a “bobbed,” stubby tail with black bands on its upper surface. Their tail also has a black tip on its upper surface but not the back. Their fur is usually gray to brown, with mottled black spots interspersed with black lines on their bodies. They also have black stripes on their inner forelegs and tail.
From a side view, you will notice that a bobcat is slightly higher at the rump than at the shoulders. Bobcats and lynx have long hind legs in proportion to their forelegs.
Bobcats have black-tufted, proportionately large ears. In other words, they have short ear tufts of hair that poke up above their ears and are black at the tips. They have black ears with white spots in the center of each ear’s backside. This gives the impression of a false eye on the back of each ear.
They also have a whiskered face that seems broader due to their long ruffled facial hair and whiskers. Their eyes are yellow with round black pupils.
What do bobcats eat in West Virginia?
Despite their comparatively small size, bobcats are aggressive, tough predators. At times, they take down larger animals that are several times bigger than they are, such as wild hogs and white-tailed deer. However, their regular diets mainly consist of small mammals such as eastern cottontails, snowshoe hares, eastern gray squirrels, American red squirrels, fox squirrels, and assorted rodents. They also eat reptiles, birds, insects, and carrion. When they take up residence close to a residential area, their menu might occasionally also include domestic animals, such as stray cats, small pets, and/or small livestock, such as goats or chickens.
They even use venomous snakes as a food source when the opportunity arises despite not being immune to the venom. They accomplish this by using their quickness to pin the snake’s head down with a paw, after which they dispatch the snake with a quick bite to its spine behind the head.
West Virginia’s venomous snakes are the Eastern Copperhead and the Timber Rattlesnake. See
Reproduction and Life Cycle for Bobcats
In West Virginia, Bobcats mate between February and March. During the breeding season, a male bobcat may mate with multiple females. If they successfully mate, the gestation period for bobcats is 60 days. Females mostly give birth in late April or early May.
After breeding, the male and female go their separate ways. The female takes all responsibility for the selection of a den site and the rearing of the young. Females generally give birth between late April and early May. See
Look for maternal dens in a wooded area. Bobcats use features such as a rock outcropping, hollow trees or hollow logs, openings in the ground, the root masses of overturned stumps, or the space beneath a fallen tree as denning sites.
A bobcat litter consists of anywhere from 1 to 7 kittens. The average litter size, though, is around 3. Bobcat kittens are born with their eyes sealed, just like domestic cats are. However, their eyes will open when they are a week to 10 days old. By the time they are 2 months old, they will have replaced their spotted baby fur with a haircoat similar to what their parents have.
By mid-July, the kittens begin to venture out with the mother bobcats to fine-tune their survival skills. Their training may last into the early winter. By mid-winter, the kittens strike out on their own.
Female bobcats reach sexual maturity at 1 year of age, while males reach sexual maturity at age 2.
The average life span of a wild bobcat is 7 to 10 years. See
Mountain lions in West Virginia (Puma concolor)
Due to the fact that they live in a wide geographical area, this large cat has a long list of regional names. In recent years, their scientific name was even changed from Felis concolor to Puma concolor. Some common names that mountain lions go by are cougar, panther painter, Andean Mountain lion, and puma.
The eastern cougar is a native species to West Virginia. However, these large felines have not been present in the state for a long time. In fact, they were exterminated from West Virginia in the late1800s
Other animals that have been eradicated from West Virginia are the bison, the gray wolf, the elk, the river otter, the beaver, and the fisher. The last 4 species mentioned have all been restored to the state to some degree.
Before the area that now encompasses West Virginia was colonized by European settlers, cougars were numerous. As more people came into the area, these big cats were viewed as a threat to agricultural animals and people. Consequently, bounties were placed on mountain lions in many parts of the state. For example, in Randolph County, between 1852 and 1859, bounties were paid on 73 panthers.
Overhunting of cougars, along with overhunting of their main prey animal, the white-tailed deer, and habitat loss eventually eradicated the eastern mountain lion from West Virginia as well as the rest of the eastern states with the exception of south Florida.
The last known eastern cougar in West Virginia was killed on Tea Creek in Pocahontas County in 1887. See
Interestingly, in 1936, possible cougar tracks were found in Pocahontas County and reported to the National Museum of Natural History.
In 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the eastern cougar from the endangered species list and declared the sub-species to be extinct.
To add some confusion to the subject, researchers have compared mitochondrial DNA from eastern mountain lion specimens to that of western mountain lions and determined that the eastern mountain lions sampled are not any more closely related to each other than they are to the western mountain lions. See. This calls into question whether not eastern cougars ever existed as a distinct sub-species.
One more wrinkle to the question of the eastern cougar is this. Wildlife experts now have all mountain lions grouped into sub-species. As of the year 2017, mountain lions are taxonomically divided into 2 sub-species. The first is (Puma concolor couguar) or northern cougar. Northern cougars range through North America, Central America, and possibly northwestern South America. The second sub-species is (Puma concolor concolor) or southern cougar. These cats range only in South America See
What we do know is that mountain lions are a native species in West Virginia, but they have been expatriated from the state. The closest established population of cougars to West Virginia is a small population in Southern Florida. See
Cougars have been expatriated from the state, and yet cougar sightings in West Virginia are a yearly occurrence. According to the Eastern Puma Research Network, more than 300 cougar sightings have been reported in West Virginia over the past 30 years.
Cougar sightings with an absence of physical evidence, such as a game camera image, tracks, fur, or scat, are unverifiable. In fact, many sightings turn out to be cases of mistaken identity. Yellow Labradors, bobcats, and even large house cats sometimes get mistaken for cougars.
On the other hand, some cougar sightings turn out to be authentic. For example, in 1976, 2 western mountain lions were captured in Pocahontas County after someone illegally released them there.
One last possible source of mountain lion sightings in the eastern United States, in places they’re not supposed to be, is the fact that individual semi-adult cougars travel 100s of miles, sometimes from expanding breeding populations as they attempt to establish their own territories.
Here’s why. An adult male mountain lion’s territory can cover up to 250 square miles. What’s more, they fight to the death, sometimes defending their territories from intruding males.
A famous example of what I’m talking about occurred in 2011 when a mountain lion traveled over 1500 miles from South Dakota to be struck and killed by a car in Connecticut. See
These semi-adult cats don’t just come from the western United States; they also travel from southern Florida. In 2008 a deer hunter in Georgia killed a mountain lion that DNA proved was a Panther from south Florida. See
Where are mountain lions typically found?
Mountain lions live on all three of the American continents. Their range begins in Canada’s Yukon territory and extends south through parts of North America, Central America, and South America to the southern tip of Argentina.
In Canada, the biggest populations of them are in British Columbia and Alberta. On the other hand, in the United States, they mainly live in the western states and Florida in the southeast. In Florida, the cougar is called the Florida panther.
What do mountain lions look like?
To visualize what a mountain lion looks like, picture a giant house cat with short tan hair. Mountain lions are much larger than domestic cats, though. Average house cats weigh in at around 10 pounds, while male mountain lions can weigh over 200 pounds.
These large cats have muscular slender bodies, rounded heads, and upright ears that are oval at the tip. Another characteristic that mountain lions have is their muscular long tail, which accounts for almost one-third of the entire length of the animal. They use their mountain lion longer tail for a counterbalance, moving it from side to side as they navigate through uneven terrain.
Mountain lions have a tan coat of short, coarse hair over most of their body. The area around their nose, the tip of their tail, and the tips of their ears are black. Their belly, the area above their upper lip, below their lower lip, and their chin are all white. They also have a sprinkling of dark hair on their backs. There are some coat color variances between different geographic locations.
Mountain lions are the second largest cat in the western hemisphere, smaller only than the Jaguar. However, worldwide, the African Lion and the Tiger are also larger.
Male and female mountain lions are phenotypically identical in every respect except for size. Males are 30 to 40% bigger than females. Though sizes vary considerably throughout the cat’s geographic range, an adult male cougar typically weighs between 110 and 180 pounds, 50 to (82 kgs). A rare few of them grow bigger than 200 pounds (91kgs). Female mountain lions or queens average between 80 and 130 pounds (36 to 59 kgs). Adult males or toms will reach a length of 6 to 8 feet (1.8 to 2.4 M) from their snout to the tip of their tail. On the other hand, adult females are 5 to 7 feet long (1.5 to 2.1 M).
Mountain Lions are Not Big Cats
A full-sized mountain lion is a huge cat. However, a fun fact is that despite their large size, mountain lions are not taxonomically classified as big cats because they cannot roar. Leopards, for example, are smaller than mountain lions, but since they can roar and cannot purr, they are classified as big cats, while mountain lions are not. Another interesting thing that I can mention here is that mountain lions purr.
Since they purr and cannot roar, mountain lions are in the Felis genus, while big cats that cannot purr and can roar are in the Panthera genus.
What do mountain lions eat?
If there were mountain lions in West Virginia, they would prey on white-tailed deer, elk, wild boars, wild horses, coyotes, raccoons, rabbits, birds such as wild turkeys, various small rodents, beavers, porcupines, skunks, snakes, pets, farm animals, feral cats, and any other native wildlife they can catch.
Mountain lion behavior
Mountain lions are solitary animals. It’s a Rarity to see 2 or more together unless during mating or in the case of a female raising young. They have expansive home territories.
In fact, an adult male cougar’s home range is normally more than 100 square miles and up to 250 square miles. They will sometimes mark their territory by leaving claw marks on trees. They also scratch up piles of leaves and or pine needles that they urinate on as a scent marker. Male mountain lions fight to the death sometimes to defend their territory.
Do mountain lions ever harm humans?
I’ve taken much of the following section from another one of my blog posts entitled “Are Mountain Lions Dangerous?” Found here.
Fatal mountain lion attacks on humans are extremely rare. In fact, there are only 20 records of fatal mountain lion attacks on humans in all of North America in the last 100 years. Don’t let that fact lull you into a complete sense of false security, though. There have been many more mountain lion attacks over the years that didn’t result in a fatality. Mountain lions are, in fact, dangerous animals.
A mountain lion is a formidably tough wild predatory animal. They can run 40 to 50 miles per hour for short bursts. Additionally, they can leap 18 feet vertically and 40 feet horizontally to catch their prey. These stealthy predators typically stalk their prey from behind and then leap on an animal’s back. They then crush their cervical spine or larynx with their powerful jaws. They have a bite force of 750 pounds per square inch.
Here are a couple of recent examples of non-fatal mountain lion attacks on humans. See See
Some factors that cause mountain lions to attack humans
The majority of the time, mountain lions use their ghost-like skills to avoid human contact. On rare occasions, though, they attack humans. Below are a few of the reasons why.
- If the cougar has an injury or some sort of impairment that prevents it from killing its normal prey, it’ll be more likely to look at a person as potential prey.
- Male mountain lions engage in fights for territory. Some of their battles are to the death. A percentage of cougar attacks on humans are perpetrated by hungry young males who have been kicked out of territories with a more abundant food supply.
- Scientific data suggests that mountain lions that were orphaned at a young age are more likely to attack humans. This is possibly because they missed the part of their training where their mothers taught them that humans are to be feared.
Coopers Rock Mountain Lion Sanctuary
Cooper Rock Mountain Lion Sanctuary is a facility operated by Mark Jenkins in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. They provide a place for abused and neglected mountain lions. It is West Virginia’s only sanctioned refuge for mountain lions. The animals that they take in are not suited for life in the wild.
One example of the animals at the facility is a mountain lion named Montana. He was orphaned when his mother was shot by a hunter near Yellowstone Park. His two siblings ended up in a zoo in New York.
As of 2016, the facility housed 4 mountain lions and 1 bobcat. See
Are there black panthers in West Virginia?
The West Virginia DNR doesn’t think so, even though they get several black panther reports per year. They say that black panthers do exist. However, they don’t exist in West Virginia.
Here is a trail cam photo of a black panther that supposedly came from West Virginia. The trouble is that it’s hard to verify exactly where the photo came from.
What we call black panthers are actually melanistic leopards or melanistic jaguars. There has never been a documented black mountain lion.
Getting back to leopards and jaguars, leopards live in Africa and Asia. On the other hand, Jaguars live on all 3 American continents. However, the furthest north they range is the desert southwest of the United States. A regular jaguar was killed in Louisiana in 1886. See, That was an isolated incident that happened a very long time ago, though. What’s more, it happened 3 states away from West Virginia.
Wildlife biologists say that a likely culprit in a lot of black panther sightings is the fisher. Fishers are long-bodied and dark brown, trending towards black. A large fisher will be up to three feet long from nose to tail tip. They are very elusive animals. Consequently, if a person gets to see one, it might only be a glimpse before the animal ghosts away through the forest. Under such circumstances, it might be easy to mistake a fisher for a black panther.
Other candidates to be mistaken for a black panther are black Labradors, black domestic cats, and black bears.
Getting back to the question of whether or not black panthers live in West Virginia, I’ll say that there are still things out there that the experts don’t know about. Furthermore, it’s fun to imagine that there are black panthers out there somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
