Hey Supercat how have you been?! You know we now have a Cat board if you ever feel like posting there. Not that it affects cat vs dog debates in The Arena section but I WOULD like to balance this forum out by making it more cat-friendly. And with the forum already having a Dog Pound sub-board, why NOT a Cat board?
As to your post, while I don't agree with all your interpretations it's still a good breakdown that raises a lot of talking points.
Honestly I find this matchup difficult to call and the only reason is because of the cougar's weight advantage at max weights. A couple of years ago I considered the cougar to be superior to the leopard AT PARITY but have since changed my mind and now favour parity leopard.
You raised a series of capability-comparisons, most of which I can't really argue with. The biggest talent I see in the cougar is that it's a supreme generalist, THE supreme generalist/jack-of-all trades of the cat family. Moreso than any other cat the cougar is good at most things and has few weaknesses. Perhaps the cougar's generalist talent is a big reason for it having the largest geographical range of all the world's cats.
Another amazing talent of the cougar is how robust it is for a felinae where it's largely within the robusticity spectrum of pantheranae. I say "largely" because for reasons I'll state shortly I actually don't think it is quite as overall robust as pantherinae, one big reason for my change in position on the cougar vs leopard debate.
In your post you made a series of capability-comparisons for the cougar and leopard, most of which I agree with. However the problem I see here is that some of those capabilities translate to the overall talents of the cats rather than how well those capabilities translate to combat. So when you said: "The cougar is superior in just about everything", yeah I agree that the cougar overall possesses more capabities than the leopard, although to my mind a lot of capabilities don't segway to combat superiority, in fact the opposite. Let me go through them...
SIZE: Cougar > Leopard. Agreed, at the upper range the cougar is moderately heavier, a factor which is an advantage for combat. So that's "1" to the cougar!
SPEED: Cougar > Leopard. Again I agree the cougar wins this contest and is a faster sprinter. However in this instance I'd consider this speed to come at a cost of combat capability given that large-weight carnivorans tend to give up brute strength and robusticity to buy that speed.
We see this in bears where larger bears are slower runners and more formidable at face-to-face combat because of it. We don't say that Bear A's superior speed buys that bear more combat capability over slower Bear B. The opposite is the case.
For ungulate the faster sprinters tend to be the more gracile fragile animals. In cats the female African lion, faster than the male, buys that speed at a cost to robusticity/brute strength... So for this one I'd actually give "1" to the leopard, making the score 1/1.
JUMPING ABILITY: Cougar > Leopard. Again I think the cougar buys this capability at the cost of fighting. The best jumpers/leapers are weaker fighters because of it, so I don't consider this capability to be combat-friendly so will give "1" to the leopard making the score 2/1 to the leopard.
AGILITY: Leopard > Cougar. Hm after seeing leopard flying through the trees chasing monkey I don't know if the cougar is more agile! Being "good" at most things, the cougar of course IS a good climber. But clearly still well-inferior to the cougar in this regard. I'd consider climbing ability to be a manifestation of agility. What aspects of agility are you thinking of when you say the cougar is more agile? You might be right but I'm not getting clarity on this one.
For now I'll assume the leopard is more agile, but again when I think of other animals that are very agile I don't tend to relate those animals to being stronger fighters. Agility is often bought at the cost of fighting capability so I'll actually give a point to the cougar for being less agile, making the score 2/2.
PREDATION: Cougar = Leopard. I'm not sure, I see both animals taking impressive prey. So until I know better I'll just call this even. 2/2.
ROBUSTICITY: Leopard > Cougar. I replaced your "Forelimb Strength" category with "Robusticity" as I think we need to consider which cat is the more robust animal overall rather than just in forelimb robusity.
So Wroe's limb long bone dimension study was largely responsible for me originally siding with the cougar in this debate. However I now believe I took that study too much as gospel without considering other issues and implications. Like Undertaker alluded to in one of his posts it's too easy to take the robusticity study as standalone.
How many cougar and leopard specimens were used in the study? One of each? After all there is variation in robusticity between different cougars and different leopards, particularly in different weight categories where smaller cougars and leopards tend to be more gracile than their larger counterparts.
Are there other limb long bone studies for cougar and leopard? I don't know. In any event I'll give the cougar the benefit of the doubt here and assume the cougar has more robust, stronger forelimbs.
As stated in that study, forelimb robusticity is strongly indicative of the overall robusticity of the animal, a statement and fact that is used by many of us to assume the cougar is overall more robust.
However to my mind this statement should be taken as a general indicator only as there is still variation in the overall robusticity of an animal independent of forelimb robusticity. For example the leopard has the widest neck-circumference respective of bodyweight and seconding jaguar by a small margin! The leopard's HEAD itself respective of bodyweight is larger than all cats excepting the jaguar, the leopard has a very big head that is a lot larger than the cougar's felinae head.
In Wroe's robusticity study, while the cougar does have the more robust forelimbs, if you add up all four limb long bones the leopard actually comes out slightly in front. Nevertheless we should acknowledge that the forelimb is far more combat-important than the other limbs so I'll give the cougar the overall "limb" robusticity-for-combat advantage.
But while forelimb strength is very important, I do think that head/neck robusticity/strength is even moreso when it comes to cat vs cat fights. After all the head (supported by the neck) is the business end of these animals, which they use even more than their forelimbs to grapple one another. Not as much as dogs, but still more than their forelimbs.
And with these cats trying to maim one another using their faces I think a superior head and neck structure provides more of a combat advantage than superior forelimb. Especially given that the forelimbs of the cougar are only a little more robust while the head and neck structure of the leopard is far moreso.
What else? I'm not aware of any data on cougar/leopard torso dimensions but would assume based off observation that the leopard is a good deal more robust around the middle. So contrary my be previous position I do now consider the leopard to be overall more robustly-built than the cougar, by more than a neglible margin. A reasonable margin. Even assuming the cougar is mildly more robust in forelimbs, the leopard has just too much in other ways, especially the head/neck.
As an add-on we know leopard has a mechanical advantage over the cougar for grappling, which by itself might even out the cougar's small forelimb robusticity advantage for fighting with forelimbs. 3/2 to the leopard.
AGGRESSION: Regarding temperament, when human leopard and cougar hunters compare notes, leopards are found to be far more aggressive than cougars when confronted by both dogs and men. A BIG difference in temperament here, which I see as the pantherinae vs felinae factor. Pantherinae are just more "bully" than felinae.
As well, the leopard is more sexually dimorphic than the cougar which indicates more intense intraspecific conflict between rival males for the leopard. Leopard males are more intense in their competition with one another, denoting not only a temperament difference but also fighting experience. 4/2 to the leopard.
CONCLUSION
Even though I've got a 4/2 score to the leopard I'm still not necessarily going to favour the leopard on this matchup because this thread asks to compare max-weight rather parity cats. This score is really a "parity" score if you take out the "size" score, in which case the parity score would be 4/1 to the leopard.
However this scoring system is imcomplete as well as poorly graduated and I don't actually think parity cougar is THAT inferior to leopard. Only little. But as far who wins at max weights I think that all comes down to how much heavier max cougar is than max leopard. How much weight difference IS there between max cougar and max leopard? 20 lbs? With a 10 lb difference I'd probably still side with the leopard, but with a 20 lb difference it's getting debatable for me like it could be combat parity.
