Puma

Talk to local authorities or park rangers to see if it is advisable before taking such a risk. The term "paperless office" seems to have been finally discredited and integrations of future desk forms with future computer systems are usually discussed under the more neutral term of office of the future. Jogging, running, and biking on wildland trails can be particularly hazardous since such runners are likely to be less attentive to the surroundings and the motion can trigger a "chase and kill" reflex in the animal. In a sense, the typical desk is becoming gradually virtual through a combination of the GUI and printouts, and is now expanding in size instead of shrinking, because of the exploitation of cubicle walls and of the theoretically infinite size of the GUI desktop. California law requires that wild animals who have attacked a human must be killed if they can be located. An example of this is the recycle bin appearing on the microsoft desktop. This, as well as the extinction in California of the wolf and brown bear, has allowed the puma to greatly increase its numbers, as there are usually no longer any competing predators able to steal a puma's kill, though a few black bears may be strong enough to do so. The desk's working surface served as the inspiration for our present direct manipulation interface, which we usually know as the GUI, the graphical user interface or as the virtual desktop.

Pumas cannot be hunted in California except under very specific circumstances. Even computer monitor frames themselves are used to attach reminder notes and business cards. A young male puma was shot nearby by rangers later in the day. The cubicle walls have become new homes for papers and other items once left on the horizontal desktop surface. On January 8, 2004 a puma killed and partly ate a mountain biker in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park in Orange County, California; what is assumed to be the same animal attacked another mountain biker in the park the following day, but was fought off by other bikers. Since this last paper boom again produced a rise in the number of office workers and rises in office space rent, the infamous cubicle desk became widely accepted in the USA as an economical way of putting more desk workers in the same space without actually shrinking the size of their working surfaces. Pumas in such circumstances may come to lose their fear of both people and dogs and come to see them as prey. As information work was shifted to computers, users constantly printed out what was on their screens because the computer monitors had a resolution which was much inferior to that of paper, and because monitors were too costly to occupy entire desks, like sheets of papers laid out for comparison and/or for "reminding" purposes.

Attacks by puma on humans and pets are associated with urban areas situated in the wildland urban intermix such as the Boulder, Colorado area which have encouraged the traditional prey of the puma, the mule deer, to habituate to urban areas and the presence of people and pets. The exact opposite happened. There were around 100 puma attacks on humans in the USA and Canada during the period from 1890 to January 2004, with 16 fatalities; figures for California were 14 attacks and 6 fatalities. There would be no need for paper since all documents would be perfectly organized and accessible on the computers. Attacks on humans are rare, but do occur — especially as humans encroach on wildlands and impact the availability of the puma's traditional prey. The beginning of this paper boom gave birth to the concept of the "paperless office", in which all information would appear on computer monitors. If a male puma invades the territory of another male, he may kill the kittens of resident females so that they will become receptive to mating. The modular nature of the personal computer and its printer and other peripherals gave a boost to the existing but recently invented ergonomic desk, which was adapted to the peculiar needs of computer users.

Female pumas usually have 3 or 4 kittens in a den in a rocky location. The biggest paper boom occurred in the last decades of the 20th century with the introduction of mainframe computer printers and personal computer printers. A male may breed with several females. Even executive or management desks became mass-produced, built of cheap plywood or fiberboard covered with wood veneer, as the number of persons managing the white collar workers became even greater. Adult males tend to claim a 250 km² (100 mile²) stretch for their territory; adult females take (50 to 150 km² (20 to 60 mile²) on average; however their ranges can vary from as much as 1,000 km² (370 mile²) to as little as 25 km² (10 mile²). Modular desks seating several co-workers close by became common. Like other cats, they will also move to certain areas for feeding. Paperwork drove even higher the number of desk workers, whose work surface diminished in size as office rents rose, and the paper itself was moved more and more directly to filing cabinets or sent to records management centers, or transformed into microfilm, or both.

Pumas will catch and kill their prey 98% of the time, so perhaps they can afford to be a bit choosey. Another big boom occurred after the Second World War with the spread of photocopying. Pumas do not enjoy being scavengers, however, and will generally hunt for their own food and not eat from a carcass. The L-shaped desk became popular, with the "leg" being used as an annex for the typewriter. The carcass of the kill is usually then buried or partially covered to protect it for several days, while the puma continues to roam and comes back for nourishment as needed. Steel desks were introduced to take heavier loads of paper and withstand the pounding meted out on the typewriters. They usually kill with a bite at the base of the skull to break the neck of their target. A smaller boom in office work and desk production occurred at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th with the introduction of smaller and cheaper electrical presses and efficient carbon papers coupled with the general acceptance of the typewriter.

They hunt alone and ambush their prey, often from behind. The famous Wooton desk and others were the last, monstrous manifestations of the dying "pigeonhole" era. They normally hunt large mammals, such as deer and elk, but will eat small animals, such as beavers, porcupines or even mice, if the need arises. Correspondence and other documents were now too numerous to get enough attention to be rolled up or folded again, then summarized and tagged before being pigeonholed in a small compartment over or under the work surface of the desk. Pumas can kill and drag prey about 7 times their own weight. Paper documents started leaving the desk as a "home", with the general introduction of filing cabinets. There are no authenticated reports of truly melanistic pumas. It provided a relatively fast and cheap way to lock up the ever increasing flow of paper without having to file everything by the end of the day.

Abnormally dark brown pumas with paler bellies have been described, primarily from South and Central America and were described as couguar noire in Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. More paper and more correspondence drove the need for more complex desks and more specialized desks, such as the rolltop desk which was a mass produced, slatted variant of the classical cylinder desk. Abnormally pale and even white (leucistic but not albino) pumas exist. Thus, age alone does not guarantee that an antique desk is a masterpiece, since this shift took place more than a hundred years ago. Kittens have irregular blotches of darker brown which can sometimes persist into adolescence but disappear by the time the cat is a year old. From then on, limited quantities of finely crafted desks have been constructed by master cabinetmakers for the homes and offices of the rich while the vast majority of desks were assembled rapidly by unskilled labor, from components turned out in batches by machine tools. The normal coloration of the puma is tawny or sandy, mimicking their principal prey, the deer. This was the first sharp division in desk manufacturing.

Pumas that live closest to the equator are the smallest, and increase in size in populations closer to the poles. As these office workers grew in number, desks were mass-produced for them in large quantities, using newer, steam-driven woodworking machinery. Their life span is about a decade in the wild and 25 years or more in captivity. This produced a boom in the number of, or some might say the birth of, the white-collar worker. Puma kittens have brownish-blackish spots and rings on their tails. Refinements to those first desk forms were considerable through the 19th century, as steam-driven machinery made cheap wood-based paper possible in the last periods of the first phase of the industrial revolution. Adult females can be 2 m (7 ft) long and have a mass of about 35 kg (weigh approx 75 lb). The ergonomic desk of the last decades is the newest addition to a long list of desk forms, but in a way it is only a refinement of the mechanically complex drawing table or drafting table of the end of the 18th century.

In exceptional cases males may reach as much as 90 kg. The desk forms we are familiar with in this beginning of the millennium were born mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries. Adult males may be more than eight feet long (nose to tail), and have a mass of about 70 kg (weigh approx 150 lb). It is often possible to find out if a table or other piece of furniture of those times was designed to be used as a desk by looking for a drawer with three small separations (one each for the ink pot, the blotter and the powder tray) and room for the pens. Puma claws are retractable and they have four toes. Desks of the Renaissance and later eras had relatively slimmer structures, and more and more drawers as woodworking became more precise and cabinet-making became a distinct trade. Their bite strength is more powerful than that of any domestic dog. Desks of the period usually had massive structures.

The puma can run as fast as 50 km/h (30 mph), jump 6 m (20 ft) from a standing position, vertically leap 2.5 m (8 ft), and often weigh more than 70 kg (150 lb). The absence of regular movable type printing also influenced desk size and shape because of the bigger volumes required for manuscript documents. Pumas are tawny-colored with black-tipped ears and tail. The desks were designed, consequentially, with slots and hooks for bookmarks as well as writing implements. circa 1990) and an estimated 4,500 to 5,000 in Colorado. Before the invention of the movable type printing press in the 15th century, any reader was potentially a writer or publisher or both, since any book or other document had to be copied by hand. There are an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 pumas in California (est. Medieval illustrations show the first pieces of furniture which seem to have been designed and constructed for the specific goals of reading and writing.

They have also begun preying on pets, such as dogs and cats, and livestock, but have rarely turned to people as a source of food. Desk forms might have existed in classical antiquity or in other ancient centers of civilization in the Middle East or Far East, but we have no specific proof. Due to urbanization in the urban-wildland interface, pumas often come into contact with people, especially in areas with a large population of deer, their natural prey. . There are continuing reports of the survival of a remnant population of the Eastern Cougar in New Brunswick, Ontario, and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec. At the other end one finds the portable desk, which, in its smallest forms, is light enough to be placed on a lap or on small supports on a bed. It is anticipated that they will soon expand their range over the entire eastern and southern United States. At one extreme in size one finds the Armoire desk, encased in a very large cabinet looking like a traditional wardrobe from the exterior, when the doors are closed.

Pumas have been seen along the northern shore of Lake Superior with an attack on a horse in Ely, Minnesota in 2004. To many the ideal or generic concept of a desk is the pedestal desk, which is often called an executive desk. Pumas are gradually extending their range to the east, following creeks and riverbeds, and have reached Missouri and Michigan. For instance, an Armoire desk is a desk built within a large wardrobe-like cabinet usually having the height of a man or a woman. The densest concentration of pumas in North America is found on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Not all desks have the form of a table. In Canada, pumas are found west of the prairies, in Alberta, British Columbia and the southern Yukon. Unlike a regular table, only one side of a desk is suitable to sit on, except for some unusual desks like a partners desk.

Hunted almost to extinction in the United States, the puma has made a dramatic comeback, with an estimated 30,000 individuals in the western United States. The list of desk forms and types gives the most common desk variations. When pumas are found and relocated to more "wild" parts of the state, they are put into competition with already existing cats. Desks often have one or more drawers. This is mostly due to human infringement, clashing with cities and other urban "advancements" or because of the loss of territories that urbanization brings. It is often used in a work or office setting to read or write on, using simple implements like a pencil and paper or complicated ones like a computer. One of the only locations where the puma is in great danger is within the United States, mainly Florida and other parts of the East Coast. A desk is a furniture form and a class of table.

Even now, it has the widest range of any New World land animal, spanning 110 degrees of latitude, from the northern Yukon Territory (in Canada) to the southern Andes (on both the Chilean and Argentinian sides). Before the modern human population explosion in the Americas, the puma ranged across most of the Americas. Pumas have one of the largest ranges of any wild cat, holding competition with only the Eurasian Lynx, Wild Cat and greatly spread Leopard. Hybrids between pumas and jaguars have been reported, but none have been proven.

Hybrids between a puma and an ocelot have also been bred. In spite of not being closely related to the pantherine big cats, hybrids between pumas and leopards have been bred and are called pumapards. Although a controversial move, the hybrids are more vigorous than pure Florida panthers and excessive inbreeding is averted. Hybrids between subspecies of puma have occurred where new blood has been introduced into the Florida panther.

. There is a considerable variation in color and size of these animals across their large range of habitats. The puma is not closely related to other large felines, such as leopards and lions. Recent DNA analysis has established that the puma is supposedly quite closely related to the jaguarundi and North American cheetah (Miracinonyx, now extinct), but not to true cheetahs.

concolor is accepted as having been wholly extirpated by the late 1800's, and where breeding populations have not been documented as re-established by 2005. Such anecdotal accounts are particularly prominent in the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, a region where P. The melanistic gene can be seen in a variety of cats, including the Lion, Tiger, Leopard, Jaguar, Caracal, Jaguarundi, Serval, Ocelot, Margay, Bobcat, Geoffrey's Cat; however, melanism has never been documented in Puma concolor, though urban legends of "black panthers" persist. In South America, panther refers to the jaguar and can refer to either the spotted or black jaguar.

In Europe and Asia, panther means leopard and can refer to either the spotted or black leopard. In North America, particularly the United States, panther by itself refers to a puma, although the term black panther is correctly associated only with the melanistic variants of leopards or jaguars rather than pumas. In fact in the English language the puma has over 40 different names. In Brazil it is known an suçuarana, from the Tupi language, but also has other names.

The word puma comes from the Quechua language. It is also known by the regional names of cougar, mountain lion, panther, catamount, and painted cat. It is more closely related to the common house cat than to the African lion. Though large in size this cat cannot roar, but instead purrs and has even been said to make eerily humanlike screams when courting.

The puma (Puma concolor since 1993, previously Felis concolor) is a type of predator-feline found in North, Central, and South America. Norton, November, 2003, hardcover, 320 pages, ISBN 0393058077. W. David Baron, Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature, W.

Do not climb a tree as pumas can climb just as well (if not much better) than humans. Be wary when leaving pets outside, particularly at dawn and dusk. Keep pets from roaming and never feed pets outside. Install motion-sensitive outdoor lighting.

Remove dense and low-lying vegetation that provide good hiding places for pumas. The best place to hit a puma is on the nose. Pumas have been repelled with rocks, sticks, garden tools, kicks, and bare hands; a well placed kick to the face has been known to work. Fight back if attacked.

Do not crouch down or bend over; this may create the appearance of an ordinary quadriped prey rather than a typically non-prey biped. Do everything possible to appear larger or intimidating, including raising arms wildly, opening up jacket, and throwing stones and branches. Pick up young children without bending or turning from the puma (if possible). Instead, stand and face the animal, making eye contact.

If confronted by a puma, do not run; that might stimulate its instinct to chase. Do not hike alone; go in groups with adults supervising children. Andes Puma (Puma concolor araucanus). Argentine Puma (Puma concolor pearsoni).

Chilean Puma (Puma concolor puma). Mato Grosso Cougar (Puma concolor acrocodia). Bolivian Cougar (Puma concolor osgoodi). Incan Cougar (Puma concolor incarum).

Amazon Cougar (Puma concolor discolor). Ecuador Cougar (Puma concolor soderstromi). Colombian Cougar (Puma concolor bangsi). Mayan Cougar (Puma concolor mayensis).

Texas Cougar (Puma concolor stanleyana. Yuma Puma (Puma concolor browni). Kaibab Cougar (Puma concolor kaibabensis). California Cougar (Puma concolor californica).

Vancouver Island Cougar (Puma concolor vancouverensis). Oregon Cougar (Puma concolor oregonensis). Colorado Cougar (Puma concolor hippolestes). Missoula Cougar (Puma concolor missoulensis).

Patagonian Puma (Puma concolor patagonica). Baja Californian Cougar (Puma concolor improcera). Brazilian Cougar (Puma concolor concolor). Costa Rican Cougar (Puma concolor costaricensis).

Mexican Cougar (Puma concolor azteca). Eastern Cougar (Puma concolor cougar). Wisconsin Cougar (Puma concolor shorgeri) (extinct, but numerous sightings have been reported). Florida Panther (Puma concolor coryi).