The Cat Behind the OS: Meet the Real Mountain Lion

Wired Magazine (Brandon Keim)

It’s an oddity of consumer culture that nature is appropriated with little thought of the symbols being used. If Apple had named its latest operating system update after, say, the English longbow, the internet would be flush with stories about the Battle of Agincourt — yet barely a mention is made of actual mountain lions.

This just isn’t right. Mountain lions, or Puma concolor, aren’t just a branding device. They’re a reality, an evolutionary sculpture, an exquisite creature meriting the basic acknowledgement given the average Creative Commons copylefter.

“They’re the most successful land animal in the western hemisphere. They seem from an evolutionary standpoint to adapt to almost any situation, whether it’s the Amazon rainforest or the alpine habitats of the northern Rocky Mountains,” said Howard Quigley, director of the Teton Cougar Project at conservation group Panthera. “They must be doing something right.”

In that spirit, Wired presents some of the latest scientific developments in mountain lion research.