Pride lionesses frequently enter the breeding season together andlater give birth at the same time; this allows them to share nursing and other maternal duties.
Although only one out of four hunting events is successful, dominant males always eat first, lionesses next, and cubs scramble for scraps and leftovers.
A tiger can consume as much as 40 kg (88 lb.) of meat in one feeding.
Tigers may drag their prey to water to eat. They are commonly seen in the shade or wading in pools cooling off.
Since white tigers have pigmented stripes and blue eyes, they are not albinos.
It is estimated that there are less than 3,000 Bengal tigers left in the wild.
The jaguar is the largest cat of the Americas, and the only living representative of the genus Panthera found in the New World.
More than 85 species have been recorded in the jaguars diet.
Jaguars are the only big cats that regularly kill prey (especially capybaras) by piercing the skull with their canines.
Deforestation rates are highest in Latin America (FAO 1993), and fragmentation of forest habitat isolates jaguar populations so that they are more vulnerable to the predations of man.
While the puma cannot roar, it is capable of a variety of vocalizations. Both sexes have a distinctive call, likened to a womans scream, which is probably associated with courtship.
Widespread and uncontrolled hunting, which has the potential to remove animals from viable habitat in which they would otherwise be present, is an active threat to big cat species.
The larger a cat, the larger its home range.
The cheetah appears to have suffered a series of severe population bottlenecks in its history, with the first and most significant occurring possibly during the late Pleistocene extinctions, around 10,000 years ago.
Cheetahs are considered by some to be a threat to peoples livelihood; governments struggle to prevent the destruction of cheetahs on private lands by owners who own livestock and fear cheetahs will prey on their herd.
According to K. Sevrin (pers. comm. in Eaton 1974: 24), a captive cheetah was accurately clocked at 112 kph over a short distance.
Three races of tiger - virgata Caspian, balica Bali and sondaica Javan tigers -- have become extinct since the 1950s.
Stripe patterns differ among individual tigers and from one side of the cats body to the other.
A tiger cub taken in Rewa, central India, in 1951, was the last record of a white tiger in the wild. Named Mohan, this tiger became the progenitor of most white tigers now in captivity when bred with a daughter, proving that the albinism is the result of a recessive gene.
Black tigers have been reported occasionally (Burton 1933, Perry 1964, Guggisberg 1975, Mazák 1981), but the only physical evidence rests with a skin recovered from illegal traders in Delhi in October 1992, which has deep black on the top of the head and back extending down the flanks to end in stripes (P. Jackson pers.comm.).
Unlike many other cat species, tigers readily enter water.
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