Puma concolor (Safari Ltd - Wildlife Wonders)

[brontodocus]

The two 2015 additions to Safari Ltd's Wildlife Wonders are the Coyote (a completely new sculpt) and the Mountain Lion, Puma, or Cougar, Puma concolor (Linnaeus, 1771). This is the first time a Wildlife Wonders figure goes by scientific name rather than by vernacular name, hence it's "Puma concolor" on the tag and in the catalogue. It's also the first time a Wildlife Wonders sculpt is reused to represent a different species (the white repaint of the Siberian Tiger and the black version of the Grey Wolf both don't count because they were not used as different species) - it was originally used as a Black Jaguar. But this is also where the problem is: The figure has proportions which actually match a Jaguar better than a Puma. The body is very robust, deep-chested, and muscular with a massive, long-muzzled head (and proportionally small eyes and ears) and a relatively short tail. So it would have probably been a better idea to make this a Jaguar instead - and with a proper paint job it could have been a figure close to perfection. Snout-vent length is approx. 207 mm and total length approx. 308 mm, shoulder height is approx. 102 mm (about twice as large as the Safari Ltd NAW Mountain Lion http://animaltoyforum.com/index.php?topic=1276.0), so for a Puma the scale would be between approx. 1:6 - 1:8. Despite being locally extinct in many areas the Puma still has the widest geographical range of all New World land mammal species and IUCN considers it "Least Concern".
Here is a link to the Wildlife Wonders Puma concolor at Safari Ltd: https://safariltd.com/products/view/wildlife-wonders-puma-concolor-figurines-113189



















Comparison with the Wildlife Wonders Black Jaguar, the original colour version of the same sculpt:




Edit 2017-02-05: Fixed broken image urls.

[Jetoar]

Nice figure but I prefer the NAW version. Sometimes the reapaints are good however, in this figure..... I understand it  .

[brontodocus]

WW Puma images are working again.