Lynn Diemer, age 16, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, for her question:

Which is the biggest native cat of the New World?

Biologists suspect that the fur coated cats originated in the polar regions. But long ago they left their chilly homes and found more comfortable quarters for themselves. Cats, of course, are creatures of comfort and most of them settled in the kindly climates of the tropics and semi tropics.

All the members of the catty family Felidae are meat eating carnivores. They are well armed with tooth and claw and as hunters there axe none to match them. Like all animals, these prowlers must live where they can make a living    and the giant cats must live near sizable. Game animals. The lions of a neighborhood are far out numbered by the plant eating animals on which they feed. For if a region becomes over populated with lions, the game dwindles and the lions starve.

The cats, large and small, tend to keep to their own hunting grounds. In the New World jungles, the little ocelot may hunt high in the trees while the giant jaguar takes larger game nearer the ground. In the Old World, the tiger rules in Asia and the lion is lord of Africa. The big cats seem to have parceled out the hunting grounds of the world between them. In the wild state, the lion and the tiger rarely if ever come face to face.

The lion and the tiger are bigger, but not much bigger than two native cats of the New World. One is our honey colored mountain lion, alias the puma. He is a hunter of the rocky mountain slopes, the deserts and open prairies. His range extends from Patagonia northward to western Canada. The other is the spotted jaguar, who does his hunting in the jungles of South and Central America.

The body of the agile puma may be five feet long, plus three feet of catty tail. The jaguar has a five foot body plus only two feet of catty tail. Measured from the nose to the tip of the tail, the puma may be a foot longer, but the 300 pound jaguar outweighs him by about 40 pounds. There is more of the jaguar and hence he can claim to be the largest of the New World's native cats.

The big jungle cat is spotted like the Old World leopard and may equal the weight of two leopards. However, a lion or tiger may measure nine feet and the tiger may weigh 500 pounds. The biggest lion is 550 pounds which equals the weight of a pair of jaguars.

The Old World leopard and the New World jaguar look like a pair of brothers. The ground color of their furry coats is buff and their black spots are arranged in round rosettes. Sometimes a pair of spotted parents give birth to a jet black cub. This black panther may be the offspring of Old World leopards or New World Jaguars.