I2- JAGUAR

Everyone dreams of sighting a wild jaguar, but few have the luck to achieve that dream. This elusive and splendid big cat – the largest American feline – is widely but thinly distributed in Brazil, occurring in Amazonia, the Pantanal, the cerrado and such easterly national parks as Caparaó, Ilha Grande, Monte Pascoal, Chapada Diamantina and Chapada dos Veadeiros. 

characteristics

Yellow with black spots, jaguars can grow to 2.5m long, including tail, and males can weigh 120kg (females weigh up to 90kg). Forest jaguars are not only more frequently darker, but are also considerably smaller than animals living in open areas. The head is heavy set, with a broad muzzle, and irises of golden yellow to light greenish yellow. Their ears are relatively small, short and rounded, with black back sides and white central spots. The short, stocky legs have broad footpads, and the tail is relatively short and thick, entirely spotted, and black tipped.

Jaguars hunt at night, covering large distances. They prey on a wide variety of animals, in trees, water and on the ground, including sloths, monkeys, fish, deer, tapirs, capybaras and agoutis – but rarely people; if by chance it is full, you may escape an attack. They’re generally solitary and, unusually among cats, good swimmers. 

habitat

Jaguars are strongly associated with water, and you will probably meet them in forests, alongside rivers, lakes and streams. They are also found in seasonally flooded lowland rainforest, drier scrub forests and grasslands such as the Brazilian Pantanal.

Although they are very good swimmers and climbers, most of their hunting is done on the ground. More than 85 species have been recorded in their diet. Prey is usually stalked or ambushed, and carcasses may be dragged some distance to cover. They will prefer large prey such as tapirs, peccaries, and deer, but they may eat almost anything they can catch, such as capybaras, monkeys, porcupines, armadillos, birds, iguanas, snakes, turtles fish and many others.

  

Threats

The Amazon rainforest is the key stronghold of these cats, and densities may be as high as one resident per 15 square km. This refuge is of sufficient size to conserve the species in large numbers for the future. However, populations have declined in most other areas and have been eliminated from much of the northern parts of their range, as well as the scrub grassland in the south. While commercial exploitation for their skin is no longer a factor, jaguars still face local extirpation at the hands of cattle ranchers. Deforestation rates are highest in Central America, and fragmentation of forest habitat isolates jaguar populations so that they are more vulnerable to the predations of man. Jaguars are frequently shot on sight, despite protective legislation. A conservation plan has been developed in Brazil.

adapted from wildcatconservation.org