Best 6 Breakfast Snacks of the Western Cougar

No, I'm not talking about Demi Moore; this post is dedicated to a much more ferocious, much hairier type, and arguably much less Kabbalah-obsessed kind of cougar. Enjoy.

6. Insects

I couldn’t find any information as to which insects Western cougars eat, only that apparently some are eaten. I feel like they’d have to be some of the bigger species, like to tarantula’s to really be worth the cougar’s while.

5. Deer

Ungulates (hoofed animals) make up 65 – 80 % of the western cougar’s diet, and as one of the most common ungulates of the Western United States, the deer is naturally the cougar equivalent of a very hearty breakfast. I’m talking something like a big waffle and some sausage kind of breakfast, the kind of meal that makes you not want to eat all day. And, luckily for the cougar, it probably won’t! So yay!

4. Capybara

A delicacy enjoyed mostly by the Central and South American varieties of puma, this large web-footed rodent is surprisingly on this list. You’d think that with their extreme swimming prowess, the capybaras could simply flee to the water to escape their panther predators. Unfortunately, that’s where the crocodiles are. It’s hard out there for a capybara; when they’re not getting eaten by cougars and crocs, they get eaten by jaguars. Actually, as that’s a fairly decent segway into a puma factoid, it would be worth mentioning that scientists suggest that panthers only prey on the poor capybara because of jaguar competition. The jags take all the big, hearty ungulates, leaving only the huge rodents to the cougars. 

3. Bighorn sheep

Bighorn sheep of Yellowstone National Park, look out. Western cougars are coming for you.  Or at least some Western cougars. Various studies at Yellowstone have shown that some panthers rarely attack bighorn sheep, while others’ diets rely heavily on them. I don’t know how to differentiate between them, though, sheep, so my advice to you is to just stay away from all pumas. 

2. Armadillo

Alright, here I’m fudging the scope of this article a bit. Admittedly, the armadillo is a common breakfast snack of the Florida panther, not the Western one. I just included it out of the curiosity of the matter, and the disturbing, yet kind of interesting mental image of a cougar trying to eat an armadillo.

1. Moose 

I'm not going down without a fight. Fear me, cougars!

I put the moose as #1 on this list solely out of my trying to imagine what it would be like to be a cougar. Of all the animals listed here, if I were a puma, I’d definitely be happiest if I killed a moose. They are, after all the largest species in the deer family. That’s what I call bringing home the bacon, or venison, as it were.