This episode Dynasties episode 6 – Puma – David Attenborough: A mother puma must battle rivals, tackle prey nearly three times her size and endure the wild mountain weather of Patagonia in her bid to raise four cubs – her biggest litter yet.
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Delve into the secret lives of charismatic, captivating animals as they fight for their families against the odds. Get caught up in real life drama. Narrated by David Attenborough. Four extraordinary animals, each in a heroic struggle against rivals and against the forces of nature, fighting for their own survival and for the future of their dynasties.
Dynasties episode 6 – Puma – David Attenborough
The cougar (Puma concolor) is a large cat of the subfamily Felinae. Native to the Americas, its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. It is an adaptable, generalist species, occurring in most American habitat types. Due to its wide range, it has many names, including puma, mountain lion, catamount, panther and painter.
The cougar is the second-largest cat in the New World after the jaguar (Panthera onca). Secretive and largely solitary by nature, the cougar is properly considered both nocturnal and crepuscular, although daytime sightings do occur. Despite its size, the cougar is more closely related to smaller felines, including the domestic cat (Felis catus) than to any species of the subfamily Pantherinae.
The cougar is an ambush predator that pursues a wide variety of prey. Primary food sources are ungulates, particularly deer, but it also hunts insects and rodents. It prefers habitats with dense underbrush and rocky areas for stalking, but also lives in open areas. The cougar is territorial and lives at low population densities. Individual home ranges depend on terrain, vegetation and abundance of prey. While large, it is not always the apex predator in its range, yielding prey it has killed to jaguars, American black bears, grizzly bears, packs of wolves or coyotes, and in Florida to American alligators. It is reclusive and mostly avoids people. Fatal attacks on humans are rare, but increased in North America as more people entered cougar habitat and built farms.
David Attenborough
Sir David Frederick Attenborough is an English broadcaster and naturalist. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series that form the Life collection, which form a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
David Attenborough is a former senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in each of black and white, colour, HD, 3D and 4K.
Attenborough is widely considered a national treasure in Britain, although he himself does not like the term. In 2002 he was named among the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide poll for the BBC. He is the younger brother of the director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough, and older brother of the motor executive John Attenborough.
