Jaguars

Jaguars are the largest cats in the Americas. These cats once roamed from Argentina in South America all the way up to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Today, however, jaguars have been almost completely eliminated from the United States and are endangered throughout their range. At best, only an estimated 15,000 jaguars remain in the wild and Pantanal, in Brazil, is the place with the highest concentration and the best chance to observe and photograph them.

These cats, who look like leopards to some extent, have a strong and compact body. In Pantanal, where the largest jaguars can be observed, females have a body at least 1.1m long. Male are significantly larger with a body length of 1.4 to 1.8m and a weight that can reach 158kg. Jaguars have also the reputation of having the strongest bite of the wild cats – with an ability to crush the carapace of tortoises. They usually kill their preys with one crushing bite to the skull.

The jaguar hunts mostly on the ground, but it sometimes climbs a tree and pounces on its prey from above. It often swims, bathes, plays and even hunts for fish in streams and pools. Like all members of the big cat family, jaguars can roar.

Jaguars are solitary animals and live and hunt alone, except during mating season. The male’s home range is between 50 and 140 sqkm and often overlaps with the smaller home ranges of multiple females. A male aggressively protects his home range and resident females from other males.