Virginia has two different native species of wild cats. Species number one is the bobcat, and species number two is the Mountain lion. While mountain lions are native to Virginia, they have been expatriated from the state since 1882. The bobcat is the only existing wild feline predator in the state of Virginia at this time.
Bobcats in Virginia (Lynx rufus)
Bobcats are exclusively North American wild cats 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. This is why the bobcat range dies out in southern Canada. From there on north, Canada lynx are more prevalent and bobcats less so.
Where do bobcats live in Virginia?
According to the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, which is formerly the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, bobcats are most likely to be found in heavily forested/mountainous/rugged terrain. However, they exhibit little avoidance of any habitat type, with the exception of areas with dense human populations. They may live in wooded areas near farms and human habitation. Some of the areas in Virginia that hold the greatest concentrations of bobcats are the following. See
- The Barbours Creek section of Craig County
- Poor Valley in Bland County, Tazewell County, and parts of Augusta County
- The Alleghany Mountains through Highland, Bath, and Alleghany Counties
- the Massanutten Range
- Parts of Wise, Lee, and Scott Counties
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 Virginia, the size of a bobcat’s home range is anywhere from 5 to 50 miles in diameter. 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 Virginia bobcats are roughly 39 inches in length and weigh 20 to 30 pounds. On the other hand, females weigh 10 to 25 pounds.
These animals have “bobbed,” very short tails with black bands on their 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 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 depend on their keen eyesight and sense of hearing to help them locate prey.
Bobcats are the definition of opportunistic predators and will prey on whatever wild animals are most plentiful.
Bobcats 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.
Virginia’s venomous snakes are the Northern Cottonmouth, the Eastern Copperhead, and the Timber Rattlesnake. See
Are bobcats ever dangerous to humans?
Under normal circumstances, bobcats are shy, elusive animals that use all of their ninja-like skills to avoid contact with humans.
However, there have been cases where bobcats get themselves cornered inside a house or other building. If you ever come across a cornered bobcat, back away. Leave the doors open to provide it an escape route and then leave it alone.
If the animal doesn’t leave on its own accord, you’ll need to call your local Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources office to send someone to take care of the problem for you. In Virginia, you can legally kill the animal on your own property, but if you’d rather not kill it, call someone with some experience to remove it for you.
Bobcats may be small, but they have the ability to tear you up pretty good if you mess with them.
Here is an example from Mouth of Wilson where what was likely a rabid bobcat injured 2 people.
Reproduction and Life Cycle for Bobcats
In Virginia, Bobcats mate between early January to 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 5 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 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.
Before the eastern United States was inhabited by European settlers, mountain lions were common in the region, which includes present-day Virginia. However, with civilization came the great cat’s impending doom. Mountain lions were viewed as a threat to livestock as well as humans. consequently, many local governments placed a bounty on them. Also, the mountain lion’s main prey source, the white-tailed deer, became very scarce due to overhunting. Additionally, the eastern elk were hunted to extinction.
The last mountain lion in Virginia was killed in 1882. See
By the early 1900s, the sub-species of mountain lion that is supposedly native to the eastern states of the U.S., the eastern cougar, had disappeared from the landscape.
The last known sighting of an eastern cougar took place in 1938 in Maine.
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 Virginia, but they have been expatriated from the state. The closest established breeding population of cougars to Virginia is a small population in Southern Florida. See
According to the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, there have been 121 mountain lion sightings in the state since 1970. However, none of these sightings have been officially confirmed.
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.
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 new territory.
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 cougars 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 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.
