Jaguar

The Jaguar is the only big cat native to the Americas and the world’s third largest cat after tigers and lions. Leopards, which live in Africa and Asia, have spots that are similar to jaguars’, but jaguars’ spots are more complicated and also have a mark in the middle.

Many ancient South American cultures worshiped these powerful cats as gods, and depictions of the jaguar can be found in pre-Columbian art and archaeology from all over the jaguar’s range.

Jaguars, unlike many other cats, do not fear water. They are, in reality, excellent swimmers. They hunt fish, turtles, and even caimans, piercing the animals’ skulls with their extremely strong jaws. Jaguars also prey on deer, peccaries, capybaras, tapirs, and a variety of other land species, which they tend to catch by surprise at night.

Jaguars are solitary and territorial, marking their territory with their waste or clawing trees.

Females have one to four cubs, who are blind and helpless when they are born. The mother stays with them and fiercely protects them against any animal that comes near, including their own father. Young jaguars learn to hunt by spending two years or more with their mothers.

Jaguars used to be found all over the world, from central Argentina to the southwestern United States. They’ve lost more than half of their land since the 1880s. Their current stronghold is the Amazon Basin, though they can still be found in smaller numbers in Central America. They live in tropical rainforests, but they can also be found in savannas and grasslands.

Jaguars are threatened by a variety of factors, including habitat loss and illegal hunting. The high rates of deforestation in South and Central America—for grazing land, agriculture, and other purposes—have not only damaged but also fragmented jaguar habitat. Cats are boxed into patches of woodland by fragmented trees, and they can’t go far to find new mates. Inbreeding and local extinctions may result from such isolation.

Ranchers’ retaliatory killings are another danger to jaguars. Jaguars are more likely to hunt cattle as pasture land replaces forests. Cattle owners destroy jaguars in retaliation — and often in anticipation. Another rising issue for jaguars is poaching. Jaguars have long been hunted for their pelts, but there is now an increasing illicit foreign trade in jaguar teeth and jaguar bone items headed for China.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature considers jaguars to be near-threatened. CITES, a global treaty that controls cross-border wildlife trade has prohibited trade in its sections, and the species has national protections in almost every country where it is found. Poaching and drug trafficking continue, so law enforcement needs to be strengthened.

Help and creation of jaguar corridors to link isolated populations, as well as collaboration with ranchers to minimize human-jaguar conflict, are major initiatives. Ranchers can learn better husbandry practices by attending workshops, and an increasing number of programs reward ranchers who lose cattle to jaguars, making them less likely to kill the cat in revenge. Combating deforestation, which is being undertaken by a number of foreign NGOs and indigenous communities, is important.