The Jaguar is a feline that is characterized by having one of the most powerful bites in nature and by its notorious spotted yellow fur. Another characteristic of the jaguar is its solitary behavior and its proven strength when hunting and carrying its prey. You will be able to learn much more about the jaguar by continuing to read this article.
Jaguar Features
The jaguar, also known as the Yaguar or Yaguareté, is the third largest feline on the planet, after the tiger and the lion. It is a carnivore belonging to the Panthera genus and is the only variety of this genus found in the Americas. It is considered the largest feline and is most widespread in tropical environments on the American continent.
Size and weight
It is an extremely strong animal, with a stocky body and short, muscular limbs, a broad head, and modest, rounded ears. Its length ranges from 1,5 to 2,4 meters, and its long tail measures 45 to 75 centimeters. Its weight ranges from 45 to 120 kilograms, and males typically outnumber females by 10 to 20%. Its build varies depending on the area it inhabits, and the animals that populate Mesoamerica are smaller than those from South America.
Skin Coloration
The color of its skin varies from yellow to reddish on the back and sides, white on the abdomen and the inside of the legs, and its body is covered by rosettes of different sizes, with small spots in the center. The pint pattern is unique to each animal, thanks to which they can be identified.
There is a black jaguar variety that still retains the typical markings. Black or melanistic jaguars are very common in South America; however, their presence in Mexico has not been confirmed. They are colloquially known as Black Panthers. In contrast, specimens lacking pigmentation are also known, which are called White Panthers.
Jaguar Feeding
These carnivores have a diet comprised of more than 85 species. Their hunting style is absolutely lethal. They can climb, crawl, and swim, making it very difficult for their prey to escape. Their teeth are so powerful that they rank first among all felines for the most powerful bite (on par with the clouded leopard), even before the tiger and lion, and second among all mammals on the planet, after the spotted hyena, whose food is carrion.
To exemplify its strength, every time the jaguar throws itself against its prey, it directly attacks the neck causing suffocation, or inserts its strong fangs into the back of the skull, piercing the bone and reaching the brain. They can pierce thick, rough hides such as reptiles and easily pierce tortoise shells. They can also drag heavy animals eight meters and pulverize their bones.
With these skills, he can capture wild animals of up to 300 kilograms, as his attack methods are unique.
Reproduction
Through vocalizations, jaguars interact prior to copulation. When the female is in heat, she produces sounds that are answered by the males. These usually compete to decide the winner. After copulation, the female does not support the presence of the males. They reach their sexual maturity from 12 to 24 months and the male from 24 to 36 months.
Their mating season changes according to geography and their gestation period is about 100 days; females generally conceive two offspring, although they can father up to four. The young come into the world mottled and stay with the mother for a year and a half or two, when they reach sexual maturity, and then move to a new place to settle.
Their estrous cycle lasts about 37 days with 6 to 17 days of heat lapse. Throughout this period, females expel an extremely strong scent that attracts the interest of other jaguars. Births frequently occur in wet seasons, due to the great profusion of prey.
Jaguar Behavior
They are recognized by their ease of movement in their environment, and are magnificent, usually seeking to settle in areas close to water. Adults are usually solitary, except during mating season, and are primarily active at dusk. They are rare to see in the wild due to their nocturnal habits. These felines can live 10 to 12 years in the wild.
To monitor them, it has been necessary to equip them with radio-collars with a satellite positioner to enable the monitoring of their habits and movements. Thanks to this technology, for example, it became known that in the span of a year in the Calakmul area, in the south of the Yucatan Peninsula, male jaguars occupied activity zones of more than 700 square kilometers, an area equivalent to 65.000 soccer fields. Meanwhile, the females move about 160 square kilometers, an area equivalent to 15 soccer fields.
The pattern of movement in females changes depending on when food is available and the type of habitat, while in males this is determined by space and female disputes. The jaguar is a born hunter, since it quietly waits for its prey to show itself to jump on it and bite it in the head. Its bite is considered one of the most powerful among the big cats. As part of their diet, more than 22 varieties of mammals (70% of their diet), birds, reptiles and fish have been recognized.
Jaguar Habitat
The jaguar can live in different ecosystems, among which are mangroves, temperate pine forests, deserts and even mountainous areas, but it prefers warm lowland forests and subtropical forests located below XNUMX meters of elevation. In them he gets an immense abundance of animals and vegetables, as well as water.
This species once ranged from the United States to northern Argentina, but due to its human-induced destruction, it now only constitutes part of the tropical rainforests of Central and South America. The largest presence of this feline is found in the Amazon basin and the northern and eastern Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Guyana.
In Mexico, it inhabited the warm and subtropical zones of Sonora and Tamaulipas in the north of the country, descending through the coastal plains of the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, to Chiapas and the Yucatan Peninsula. More than 40% of its presence in the country has disappeared, so it has been limited to fragmented, remote and difficult-to-access forest regions on the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts, the Sierra Madre Occidental, the Sierra Madre Oriental and the south-southeast of Mexico.
In order to know its population status in Mexico, the first National Census of the Jaguar and its Prey (Cenjaguar) began in 2008 in 15 priority places for the preservation of the feline. A meticulous task that lasted three years and that put Mexico at the forefront of strategies for the preservation of the species. The research had the support of the WWF-Telmex Telcel Foundation Alliance and was planned by the Institute of Ecology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in conjunction with various government, academic, scientific and civil authorities.
According to said first census, in the country there was an estimated population of 4 thousand copies; locating most of them in the Yucatan peninsula. The second census, recently concluded, reported that the population had increased to 4,800 felines.
Threats
The jaguar lives in confinement due to the devastation of its habitat, illegal hunting, and the constant jaguar-human conflict resulting from the ever-increasing activities in its environment. The disappearance of its habitat is considered the greatest challenge it faces, as it is a species that requires vast areas of land to survive. The establishment of infrastructure, the expansion of agricultural and livestock farming, the construction of housing, and the disappearance of vegetation are all factors that have undermined and fragmented its habitat.
The reduction of its territory, and therefore of its perimeter of activity, causes the jaguar populations to separate and become more prone to extinction, since in addition to increasing conflicts with humans, the species has drawbacks of genetic variability, a natural long-term survival tactic.
Poaching is the other great challenge facing the species, since obtaining its skin, claws and teeth to be sold on the black market has caused the jaguar to currently be considered a "near threatened species". In certain nations, such as Bolivia, hundreds of jaguars have died for this reason and this trend is also present in Peru, Belize and Brazil.
On the other hand, there is a conflict with human communities that fear for the safety of their herds or potential attacks on residents. It is known, for example, that in certain areas of Mexico, jaguars compete with locals for food, as peccaries, deer, pacas, armadillos, and coatis have also become part of the local diet. Unable to find food in the jungle, jaguars often seek out domestic livestock and, in retaliation, are attacked.
State of conservation
The commercialization of its skin experienced a great heyday in the middle of the 1963th century. By 1975 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) made public a decision to ban its commercialization. However, it was only in XNUMX when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) cataloged the species in its appendix I and with it the hunting problem that this feline confronted and that continues being a challenge to their survival.
The jaguar is listed as "near threatened" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. In Mexico it is considered a species at risk of extinction and its hunting has been prohibited since 1987. The National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (Conanp) considers it a feline whose preservation is a priority.
Importance of the Jaguar in its Habitat
The jaguar is a creature that provides a great environmental service. These services are described as a wide range of situations and processes by which natural ecosystems and the species that populate them collaborate in sustaining and satisfying the requirements of human society.
Among them are: air and water sanitation; the reduction of droughts and floods; the generation and preservation of soils; pollination of crops and natural vegetation; the spreading of seeds; the recycling and displacement of nutrients; the regulation of insects that cause problems to agricultural land; the defense of the coastlines against wave erosion; the partial balance of the climate and the reduction of excessive climates and their impact.
Economists point out that if the value of these services on the planet were calculated, they could reach several trillion dollars annually. For centuries, humanity did not attach any importance or value to such services, considering them endless. Today, it is clear that it is necessary to preserve ecosystems in the best possible condition so that they continue to provide us with these services.
In the case of the jaguar, this is a species that helps maintain a healthy ecosystem. When the jaguar disappears from the jungles and forests, its prey, which are usually large herbivores, remain the owners of the landscape and consume plant varieties in an uncontrolled manner. This modifies the composition and configuration of the forests, of the soil, affecting riverbeds and, therefore, has a serial effect on other living creatures.
In Mexico, the jaguar is under threat and therefore the jungles and forests are no longer having a natural protector. By taking care of it, we ensure the permanence of essential biological passageways for Mexico and the Americas, which, in turn, provide us with environmental services that involve the production of oxygen, water, and medicines.
The Jaguar: America's Big Cat
This enormous feline, part of the tiger and lion family, was unknown to Europeans when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Americas. At that time, it represented both the encounter with a variety of peoples and the convergence with an inconceivable diversity of animals and plants.
Among them was the jaguar, a spotted feline that they called a tiger, and whose relevance was notorious in the Indo-American civilizations. Its name comes from the Tupí-Guaraní language “yaguara” which means “the one that hunts in one jump”.
It is estimated that at the time of the arrival of Europeans in America there were more than one hundred thousand copies. At that time they inhabited from semi-desert areas of North America to the warm forests of South America. Currently, the jaguar is an endangered variety of which about 50 percent of its historical environment has disappeared throughout the continent.
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