Last verifiably seen in 1938, when the final "ghost cat" was shot and killed in Maine, the eastern cougar ( Puma concolor couguar ) has now been declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). But that may not stop many people from believing that it still exists.

This subspecies of cougar (also known as the mountain lion, puma, catamount and panther, among other names) lived in the northeast U.S. and neighboring Canada. The big cats disappeared after their primary prey, white-tailed deer, were themselves hunted into near-extinction in New England. "White-tailed deer were nearly eradicated from the eastern U.S. in the late 1800s," says Mark McCollough , FWS's lead scientist for the eastern cougar. "The few cougars that survived [after that] would have had very little food to support them." (Cougars were also extensively hunted and even had bounties on their heads as threats to livestock.)