Puma skin

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  • Two puma skins
  • Felis concolor (Puma) fur skin.jpg
  • Puma fur skin 2.jpg

The puma fur , the American cat species also known as the mountain lion, silver lion, South American lion and cougar , was almost always only available in very small quantities. Puma skins were mainly processed into fur blankets and rugs . In a time of major seizures, they were also used to a lesser extent for clothing purposes, as trimmings and also sheared on an experimental basis and provided with a leopard print.

In the meantime, several subspecies of the puma have been included in Appendix I of the Washington Convention on the Protection of Species , the remaining subspecies in Appendix II. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) lists the puma as “Least Concern”.

  • Protection status:
Felidae spp. , protected under the Washington Convention, Appendix I; according to the EC regulation 750/2013 Annex B and particularly protected according to the Federal Nature Conservation Act.
Detailed protection data: First listing since April 24, 1977. Particularly protected under the Federal Nature Conservation Act since August 31, 1980.
The subspecies Puma concolor coryi , Puma concolor costaricensis and Puma concolor couguar have been protected in Appendix I WA since June 20, 1976, the subspecies Puma concolor azteca , Puma concolor mayensis and Puma concolor missoulensis since June 20, 1976 in Appendix II WA . The synonym Felis was used for the generic name Puma .

Occurrence

The puma was found all over the American continent, from central and western Canada to the southern tip of Argentina ( Tierra del Fuego ). Due to the strong persecution, especially in North America, it now only lives in the north on the west coast of Canada and in the Rocky Mountains , but protective measures have made it more common there. It is also likely to have become rare in Central and South America.

hide

The head body length of the puma is 120 to 150 centimeters, the tail is about 65 centimeters, it is smaller than the jaguar, which is also native to America . The skins of males are larger than those of females. The pumas native to the equator are the smallest forms, while those in the extreme north and south of the range are largest.

The basic color ranges from gray, silver-gray, reddish, bright red to rust-brown and dark cinnamon-brown, the middle of the back ( Grotzen ) is darker, the belly is lighter. The tip of the tail is dark. The Andean shapes are particularly dark in color. In the southernmost and northernmost peripheral areas of the occurrence, brownish tones predominate, whereas the short-haired tropical forms have bright red tones. The pattern has faded beyond recognition in the long-haired species. Black pumas are rare. Young animals have a pattern of dark spots and stripes on a yellow-brown background that is almost completely lost between the ages of 8 months and 16 to 17 months.

The hair is short, straight, thick and somewhat coarse, the underside is longer-haired.

Trade, history

Puma skin with leopard print

Since the skins were mostly processed in the areas of origin, only a few hundred skins came into international trade each year. Originally a bounty was paid for killing the puma, feared as a cattle thief, in many areas, but today it is largely protected. Large, intact skins with teeth and claws fetched a good price, even if the head was still undamaged, so that wall decorations could be made from them. The main revenue for the commercial trapper, however, was mostly in the catch premium, which at the beginning of the 20th century was 15 to 20 dollars per fur. The main amount was therefore also pelts from this volume. For these mostly damaged skins, the dealer paid two to six dollars a skin in 1915, perhaps a little more.

The trade classified puma skins into three sizes, which could occasionally vary slightly: large (5 feet = 152 cm, measured from nose to tail), medium (4 feet = 122 cm), and small (6 inches = 15 cm to 1 foot = 30 cm below medium). Sizes of 10 to 11 feet, repeatedly reported, were considered unrealistic, possibly correctable to 9 feet (274 cm) or less when checked. The color hardly played a role in the evaluation. Patagonia provided the most beautiful furs, they are silver-gray (silver lion) and, like the furs from the northern regions, have a particularly thick and fuller (smoky) fur.

The skins were sold open, not peeled off round.

At least then, the puma skin was not actually considered to be real fur by the tobacco trade. A large part of the furs was kept by the hunters as a hunting trophy or was used in other ways as wall or floor decoration. In 1937, living quarters and vehicles were not yet heated to the current level, blankets, especially car blankets, were still an essential furrier item. This year a specialist book says: "Puma skins are hardly suitable for gallantry and ready-made clothing and are almost exclusively made into rugs and blankets", or elsewhere, 23 years earlier: "because they are only used as naturalized or padded rugs". The 1967/68 season is cited as the point in time when the puma skin came into minor use for fur purposes.

In 1965, the fur consumption for a fur sheet with 4 to 8 fur, sufficient for a puma coat (so-called coat “body” ) was specified . A board with a length of 112 centimeters and an average width of 150 centimeters and an additional sleeve section was used as the basis. This corresponds roughly to a fur material for a slightly exhibited coat of clothing size 46 from 2014. The maximum and minimum fur numbers can result from the different sizes of the sexes of the animals, the age groups and their origin. Depending on the type of fur, the three factors have different effects.

The attempt to shear the skins and market them with a leopard print on them has not caught on.

Numbers and facts

Elaborated puma skin, hunting trophy in the Hunting and Equestrian Museum in Warsaw
  • In 1907 , according to Emil Brass, 1,000 puma skins came onto the world market annually from North America.
  • In 1911 Brass wrote: "In general, the fur is not worth much for the tobacco trade, at most 10 marks per piece."
  • In 1922 a puma skin cost 10 to 14 Argentine paper pesos in the Argentine wholesale trade, a leopard skin ("tiger skin") 75 to 85 pesos.
  • Between 1923 and 1924 , according to Brass, jaguar and puma skins combined, an annual average of 1,000 skins from North America, and 1,000 skins from South America, came into the trade.
  • 1934/1935 , Leipzig experts reported in the 1970s that in 1934/1935 puma skins were offered in bales for the price of 3 Schilling each.
  • In 1988 the incidence of puma skins was given as 200 to 300 per year.

annotation

  1. ↑ The information for a body was only given to make it easier to compare the types of fur. In fact, bodies were only made for small (up to about muskrat size ) and common types of fur, and also for pieces of fur . The following dimensions for a coat body were taken as a basis: body = height 112 cm, width below 160 cm, width above 140 cm, sleeves = 60 × 140 cm.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d e Christian Franke / Johanna Kroll: Jury Fränkel's Rauchwaren-Handbuch 1988/89 . 10. revised and supplemented new edition, Rifra-Verlag Murrhardt, p. 98.
  2. ↑ http://www.iucnredlist.org Last accessed December 22, 2014.
  3. ↑ a b Wisia-online Federal Agency for Nature Conservation . Last accessed December 22, 2014.
  4. ↑ RM Nowak: Walker's Mammals of the World. Vol. 1. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999, ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 , pp. 818 f.
  5. ↑ www.tiergarten-neustrelitz.de: Animal of the Month 2013, Puma ( Memento from January 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved December 22, 2014.
  6. ↑ Milan Novak et al., Ministry of Natural Resources: Wild furbearer management and conservation in North America . Ontario 1987, p. 658. ISBN 0-7778-6086-4
  7. ↑ a b c A. R. Harding: Fur Buyer's Guide . AR Harding, Columbus, Ohio 1915, pp. 342-344 (Eng.)
  8. ↑ Friedrich Kramer: From fur animals to fur . Arthur Heber & Co, Berlin 1937, p. 43.
  9. ^ H. Werner: The furrier art . Publishing house Bernh. Friedr. Voigt, Leipzig 1914, p. 94.
  10. ^ David G. Kaplan: World of Furs . Fairchield Publications. Inc., New York 1974, p. 176.
  11. ↑ Paul Schöps among others: The material requirement for fur clothing . In: Das Pelzgewerbe Vol. XVI / New Series 1965 No. 1, Hermelin-Verlag Dr. Paul Schöps, Berlin et al., Pp. 7-12.
  12. ↑ Fritz Schmidt : The book of the fur animals and fur . FC Mayer Verlag, Munich 1970, pp. 153-155.
  13. ↑ a b c Paul Schöps: The world production of fur work of the big cats . In: Hermelin XLI No. 6, Berlin and Leipzig, 1972, p. 5.
  14. ↑ Emil Brass : From the realm of fur . 1st edition, published by the "Neue Pelzwaren-Zeitung and Kürschner-Zeitung", Berlin 1911, pp. 470–472.
  15. ↑ Editor: South American Fur Goods Market . In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt , Berlin January 14, 1922, p. 3. Primary source Fur Trades Review , based on a report by Stiernspetz & Johnson, Buenos Aires.

See also

Commons : Pumafels  - Collection of images, videos and audio files