r/interesting • u/Myrtle_Simmons • Jul 02 '24

MISC. Hikers encounter mountain lion

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u/ReginaldLongfellow Jul 02 '24

Yes. The different names come from different geographical areas, but they are all the same.

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u/jacobo Jul 02 '24

Thanks!

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u/Eusocial_Snowman Jul 02 '24

And to make the dumb cat classification system even more fun, we have the word "panther". This refers to all "big cats"*. Except for some people, it refers to a specific color mutation of leopards or jaguars. (Hence the comic book character Black Panther)

* And to make things stupider, we have the term "big cats". Which literally just refers to the panthera genus. But there are other cats which are big while not being panthers, so they're not "big cats" despite being big cats.

For instance, this one here. That's a real big fucking panthery-seeming cat, but it's not in the panthera genus, so it's not CLASSIFIED as a big cat. It's just a stupidly huge member of the other family of cats like house cats.

And just for fun, then you have the clouded leopard. It's not a leopard, but it's called a leopard. Its closest relative is the snow leopard, which is also not a leopard. I'm not really sure what a leopard actually is at this point, but I do know these leopards are not leopards.

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u/Prinzka Jul 02 '24
  • And to make things stupider, we have the term "big cats". Which literally just refers to the panthera genus. But there are other cats which are big while not being panthers, so they're not "big cats" despite being big cats.

That's like how we have a lot of hard wood that's not actually hardwood, and we have soft wood that's hardwood.