How do you figure out where the cougar's from?

An elusive cougar emerged from shadows of doubt into the public eye in Chicago, but experts still have many questions about the big cat.

Was the animal shot and killed by Chicago police Monday in an alley of a crowded neighborhood the same one documented earlier this year in southern Wisconsin? Was it the same one observed in recent weeks by police and others in North Chicago and Round Lake Park?

Wildlife officials in Illinois and Wisconsin were stymied in attempts to get information Tuesday.

"I'm not even sure whose custody the animal is in," said Clay Nielsen, a cougar expert with the Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory at Southern Illinois University. Nielsen was involved in investigations of the only two confirmed cougar sightings in Illinois since the 1860s.

Calls to Chicago Animal Care and Control, which was supposed to be performing a necropsy on the animal, were not returned.

But Cook County Animal and Rabies Control administrator Donna Alexander said Tuesday the cougar was a male with no identifying marks showing it was privately owned. An examination found it weighed 122 pounds and was 3½ feet long.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources wants to get the body so Nielsen can examine it, according to spokesman Chris McCloud.

"Our focus would be where the animal came from, how it got here, how it got to the area it was at, why it was in Illinois," he said. "We're in standby mode like everybody else."

There's no law that says the state can take possession, he said.

Nielsen said he would look for several things during an examination.

Stomach contents could help determine where the cat had been. Wearing of skin in certain areas could show whether it had been lying on pavement.

That it was male would lend credence to the "dispersal" behavior of cougars, experts say. Dispersal areas of hundreds of miles are common, he said. Once established in a new area, a cougar's home range can also be that far. Being a wild animal would be an indication it was a disperser, according to Nielsen.

The nearest wild cougar population within range is in Black Hills of South Dakota, Nielsen said.

"There aren't resident cougars anywhere in the Midwest," he said.

Wisconsin authorities also are eager to get blood or tissue samples. Blood left from a cut on the paw of an animal observed in January in a barn in Rock County, east of Milton, was later confirmed as that of a male cougar. It was the first confirmed instance in a century.

Those genetics did not eliminate the possibility the cat had been captive, but it made it more likely the cougar was wild, according to Adrian Wydeven, mammal ecologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

He said southern Wisconsin wasn't a very good cougar habitat and theorized the animal may have not known where to go.

A wolf fitted with a transmitter in Wisconsin in early 2003 was found dead in a field in Indiana six months later, more than 400 miles away, Wydeven said.

"With these large predators -- wolves, bears, cougars -- when they get in poor habitat, they probably travel faster," he said.

Sightings aren't reliable, Nielsen said. He doubts the cat killed in Chicago was the same one reported by hundreds of witnesses in Lake County, but never confirmed, in 2004.

"Absolutely unlikely," he said. "What happened four years ago, I don't know what it is."

The incidence of confirmed wild cougars has been increasing in Midwest states including Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas, according to Mark Dowling, co-founder of the Cougar Network, a nonprofit research organization.

"The theory is the habitat in these states can only support so many cougars. Young animals have to disperse from where they were born," he said.