No, I don’t feel bad. That is how it looked to me, and without your work, this would still be a mystery. We have found the truth, and that is what is important.

Slappy,

Nice bobcat pictures. They have longer tails than most I have seen.

You can’t use ear tufts to make a certain ID. I have two domestic cats, and one has ear tufts. Some breeds, like Maine Coon or Norwegian Forest Cats, have prominent ear tufts.

Les

I even took it as far as doing a internet searches and looking at various photographs on Google of cougars, lynx, and bobcats. I was really surprised at some of the photographs I found. In some of the photographs of the eurasian bobcat, the head almost looked identical to a cougar but the body shape, legs, telltale bobbed tail, and tiny tufts of hair on the ears gave away the cat’s true identity.

Anyway Desertdweller, that’s why I did the enhancement–I was thinking exactly the same way as you were thinking. In fact, before the photographic enhancement, I was almost expecting a cougar to appear. But after the enhancement, it left no doubt as to the identity of the feline in question.

Still, aside from the spots, it resembles a cougar (to me, at least) much more than it does a bobcat.

Only baby cougars have spots. A baby cougar would have much different body proportions than either an adult cougar or a bobcat.

A bobcat and a lynx are two different animals, although they resemble each other. Adult lynx are much larger than bobcats, and their hind legs are even more pronounced. They both share the stub tail and the tufted ears.

While bobcats are pretty common in most areas, and have even been kept as house pets, lynx are even more reclusive than cougars. I doubt if we will ever see lynx in an urban area.

Cougars and mountain lions are the same animal.