Jaguar - Panthera onca

[LeopJag]

Wikipedia.

Jaguar predation on a Capybara - by 221extra.



Credit to big snauzer.

Jaguar Spotted In Central Mexico For First Time In 100 Years

ScienceDaily (Feb. 10, 2009) — The jaguar Panthera onca has become an animal in danger of extinction over recent decades, due to the fragmentation and deterioration of its habitat, as well as hunting and illegal animal smuggling. As a result of this vulnerability, no individuals have been seen in the centre of Mexico since the start of the 20th Century. However, Mexican and Spanish scientists have now managed to photograph a male jaguar in this region.

The lack of published records about the jaguar Panthera onca in the State of Mexico and concerns about whether this animal may have become extinct in the forests of the 674.10 km2 Sierra Nanchititla Natural Reserve led to researchers from the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM) and the University of Alicante (UA) successfully seeking out and monitoring this feline.

The Mexican-Spanish research project, which has been published recently in The Southwestern Naturalist, includes the first documented recording of Panthera Onca in the centre of Mexico, in the Río Balsas river basin. "The photographs provide information about new recording sites, and allow us to deduce that the area where the animal was observed may be a corridor connecting jaguar populations," Octavio Monroy-Vilchis, lead author and a researcher at the UAEM, tells SINC.

The researchers carried out 86 interviews with inhabitants of villages near the study area between October 2002 and December 2004, as well as collecting feline dropping samples and installing automatic photographic detection systems.

"Even though not one of the interviews mentioned sightings of jaguars, we obtained three photographs of a male, and ten of the 132 excrement samples found have been attributed to the jaguar", says Monroy-Vilchis.

According to members of the local Wildlife Conservation Society, the general area of the Río Balsas river basin is a priority area for verifying the presence of jaguars, since this "could act as a corridor for them to move around".

The experts say there are 15 areas in which it is unknown whether these animals still exist, whether their populations are stable, and if their habitat is adequate. These areas are important for scientific studies, because they could include crucial zones for the felines' long-term survival.

The jaguar's habitat, a limited territory

Monitoring the largest feline in the Americas in the centre of Mexico meant the Mexican scientists had to travel 1,360 kilometres in search of clues and footprints. The Spanish researchers financed the cameras and analysed a total of 1,800 data events collected by them, which were placed in the Natural Reserve.

Of all this material, only three photographs deposited with the image library of mammals in the Sierra Nanchititla Biological Station (UAEM) showed a male individual.

Despite the photographs taken, the researchers themselves were unable to see the animal. "The lack of evidence highlights the fact that the jaguar is more elusive than other felines, and that its presence in the area is sporadic - possibly because it has access to other resources near to Michoacán and Guerrero," says Monroy-Vilchis.

The recording of this individual and the presence of excrement in a range of sites in the south east of the State of Mexico now mean its known range has been extended to 400 km to the south east of Arroyo Seco (Querétano), 27 km to the north east of Purísima de Arista, and 140 km to the north of Puerto del Gallo (Guerrero).

According to the scientists, the fact that the animal was captured on film at 1,845 metres "supports the theory that jaguars travel along the sides of mountains because their habitat has been fragmented by hunting and other human activities", says the scientist.


One of the three photographs of the jaguar taken during the research project in the centre of Mexico.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090210134448.htm

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Jaguar mums give up baby secrets

Page last updated at 14:33 GMT, Friday, 29 May 2009 15:33 UK
Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News


Camera trap shot of a jaguar in Corcovado National Park

aguars are one of the most elusive of large animals, reluctant to be filmed or tracked in their natural habitat.

But now biologists have finally managed to learn one of the big cat's secrets; how often it gives birth.

An ongoing study in Costa Rica, one of the last strongholds of the jaguar, has revealed that females in the wild give birth every 22 to 24 months.

Knowing the reproductive behaviour of the species will be vital information in helping to protect the species.

Numbers of jaguars, the third largest of all cat species and the largest in the New World, are declining.

The big cat is occasionally sighted in Arizona and New Mexico in the US, and populations remain within Mexico and south through Central America and into South America, including much of Amazonian Brazil.

But the species is listed as Near Threatened by the World Conservation Union.

If conservationists are to estimate how the last remaining populations of jaguar might grow, they need to know three things: how many cubs females have in each litter, how many of those cubs survive on average, and how often females give birth to new litters.


Jaguar and camera trap attached to tree

But most information about the reproductive habits of jaguars comes from observations in zoos, which may not reflect how jaguars reproduce in the wild. Even in captivity, researchers have been rarely able to document how often females give birth to new litters.

So Eduardo Carrillo and Joel Saenz of the National University in Heredia, Costa Rica and Todd Fuller of the University of Massachusetts, in Amherst, US embarked on an ongoing study of jaguars living in the Corcovado National Park in west Costa Rica.

The study began in 1990 after Carrillo saw a female jaguar walking with a single cub across a beach in the park during the day.

"At that time there were few jaguar studies and the lack of information was an important issue when making management decisions about jaguar conservation," says Carrillo. "So in 1994 we decided to radio mark jaguars. In 2003 we began using camera traps."

During the study, they found that jaguars in the park feed mainly on peccaries and marine turtles.

The diet surprised the biologists because an adult jaguar is capable of eating any animal that crosses its path, including people, though there is no record of a wild jaguar ever having attacked a person in the wild.


An elusive jaguar caught on camera one month ago

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They also managed to follow a single female jaguar for three and a half years, by using the radio collar to triangulate her position and identifying her particular paw prints left in the mud.

In March one year, they saw the female being attended to by an adult male. By late May or early June she gave birth, and was seen accompanied by a single cub in July.

That cub remained with its mother for 19 to 20 months. Then some 22 months after she had first given birth, Carrillo noticed she was again pregnant, and was seen with a new cub a month or two later.

That confirms that wild jaguars seem to give birth once every 22 to 24 months, and that juvenile jaguars leave the company of their mother after 18 to 24 months, the team report in the journal Mammalian Biology.

Jaguars are thought to give birth to more than cub on average, though it is unclear how many usually survive until adulthood.

"One of the main questions about jaguars is their natural birthing habits," says Carrillo. "We have little knowledge about this until now."

However, despite the team's camera traps recording pictures of adult jaguars, the mothers are still proving protective of their offspring.

"We have pictures of pregnant females, but we have never taken a picture of a female jaguar with its cubs."

news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8074000/8074124.stm

More later!

[LeopJag]

Jaguar weights (OP'ed by 221extra)


315 pound (142 kg) Male Jaguar


Originally posted by Eagleman and Manics

Jaguars' Hunting Patterns Revealed

By Zoë Macintosh, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 16 June 2010 11:30 am ET



Brazilian ranchers troubled by the tendency of jaguars to stealthily kill cattle may be justified in their fears, according to new research on the mysterious cats' hunting patterns.

Jaguars in the Pantanal wetlands of central Brazil hunt native species, such as giant anteaters, more often than cows, scientists discovered. But when they do kill cattle, they do so at rates exceeding rancher estimates.

The results stand in sharp contrast to government and nonprofit groups' beliefs in the over-exaggeration of cattle rancher losses, in a region where 95 percent of the ranches are privately owned and have been around for more than 200 years, the researchers say.

Documenting hunting and feeding of jaguars "is extremely difficult because of their nocturnal and secretive behavior," the study scientists wrote in the June issue of the Journal of Mammalogy.

Objective, unbiased data was only possible through technology similar to that now used to track cougars, wolves and coyotes in North America.

Collared jaguars roam

Ten jaguars outfitted with collars that sent GPS signals of their whereabouts every two hours, produced a volume of data on their hunting paths and areas of concentrated use such as kill sites, dens and bed sites in the Pantanel – the world's largest freshwater wetland. Every 21 days of data collection, a team of researchers visited a few of these areas in order to identify prey remains.

A total of 11,787 GPS locations collected from October 2001 to April 2004 resulted in 1,105 areas of high jaguar use. Prey remains were found and logged at more than 400 kill sites. Just over a third of the animals killed by jaguars were cattle, while the remaining 68 percent were native species, including caiman (a crocodilian), peccaries (piglike mammals), wild hogs, marsh deer and giant anteaters.

While a recent survey suggested ranchers estimated losing about 70 head of cattle annually out of 6,000 head, the study's results for kill rates showed that during a dry year they usually lost about 390 head, and during a wet year, around 118 head.

Another landscape entirely

A major jaguar stronghold outside of the Amazonian rainforest, the Pantanal wetlands cover an area the size of Iowa frequently flooded in about 3 to 7 feet (1 to 2 meters) of water from rainfall.

"There are times literally in the field when you're on horseback and the water is up to the horse's belly," researcher Eric Gese at Utah State University told Livescience.

The jaguars "donÂ’t mind the water at all," Gese said, but the study revealed the carnivores' hunting choices are largely influenced by seasonal rainfall and water levels, as the ebb and flow of water determines their access to certain animals.

During the wet season, when cattle are scarce and cloistered among elevated plateaus, jaguars predominantly killed the numerous alligators in the area. In the dry season the pattern reversed and cattle killing peaked, as ranchers moved their cattle to the lower grounds to utilize the lush grasses exposed in the formerly flooded plains.

"As they spread the cattle out, they're just exposed to more jaguars. And the jaguars, being the large carnivore as they are, take advantage of the availability of the animals," Gese said.

Lots of cats

Other results of the landmark study, which also collected data on spatial ecology and some interactions, including the insight that jaguars were densely populated, with about 10 to 11 cats per 100 square kilometers (39 square miles) in the area studied, and "surprisingly social."

"We found that they actually encounter each other and spend more time together than we ever anticipated. That was a surprise. Not like prides of jaguars, nothing like that: we had males travelling together, and we didn't know if they were brothers," Gese said. "And the density of jaguars recorded in that area was greater than anything we encountered ... that was astounding."

"It was quite mind-blowing. So, there are a lot of cats there," Gese added.

Recognizing that the ranchers have "a real problem," yet the region's livestock supports jaguars, Gese said his team of scientists was trying to work with officials to get them to figure out a compromise and accept some form of coexistence.

"How they deal with that is up to them. How they want to enact that. This is the first time that somebody has said, 'Look there's data! They lose a lot of cattle to jaguars,'" Gese said.

www.livescience.com/animals/jaguars-hunting-patterns-100616.html

Pict

Diet of the Jaguar: www.procarnivoros.org.br/pdfs/Azevedo_doutorado_2006.pdf
(posted by Canidae)

Rediscovering the Guanaco in the Paraguay Chaco
January 25, 2006


For more than 40 years, the guanaco of the Chaco ecosystem of Paraguay has taken on an almost mythic status. Does it really exist or is it the stuff of legend? Wildlife conservationists in Paraguay are now celebrating new evidence documented with camera traps that proves that this subspecies of guanaco still persists in the harsh desert of the Gran Chaco.

The guanaco (Lama guanicoe) is one of the four camelids of South America. (A camelid is a member of the family Camelidae that includes camels, llamas and their relatives, all of which feature feet with two toes and leathery soles). The guanaco is a typical species of the cold steppes of Patagonia and the high, cold plains of the Andes but, somehow, surprisingly, it has adapted to the Chaco, one of the hottest, almost arid, ecosystems in South America.

Since 2004, Dr. Cristian Bonacic, director of Wildlife Trust Alliance member Fauna Australis of Santiago, Chile, has collaborated on this project with La Fundación DeSdel Chaco. A recent visit to the Medanos del Chaco National Park during November 2005, served to strengthen an alliance between Fauna Australis and the foundation, aimed toward developing a conservation project with local communities and the Chilean government.

Dr. Cristian Bonacic articulates the importance of the discovery: "This is a tremendous achievement. Local conservationists, led by Laura Villalba, have demonstrated that guanacos, an endangered species, still survive in the Paraguay Chaco. With this evidence, La Fundación DeSdel Chaco is collaborating with the Government to protect the single known population of the country. It is truly a rediscovery of a 120 kilos animal!

"Actually, I saw jaguar tracks in the guanaco study area and I suspect that a large prey like the guanaco still may play a role in the jaguar diet. Protecting the guanaco is not only important in itself; it is part of the needed conservation processes agenda for large protected areas." (Medanos del Chaco is a 0.5 million ha Chaco territory).

Bonacic adds, "The guanaco is a flagship species for these vast and degraded ecosystems of South America, an ecological equivalent to the kangaroo in Australia or the bison in the U.S. Guanacos are undoubtedly a keystone in the diet of the jaguar, another typical Chaco species. Protecting the guanaco is the first crucial step towards protecting the large mammals of the Paraguay's Chaco ecosystem."

Dr. Andrew Taber, executive vice president for programs at Wildlife Trust and a longtime leader in Chaco conservation, says, "Documenting this species' survival in the Paraguay Chaco is a critically important discovery, which, we hope, will galvanize officials to conserve this forgotten ecosystem."

Bonacic says that local Government officers from SEAM are extremely happy about this finding. "Gissela Escobar, a wildlife officer from the Paraguay Ministry of the Environment, endured an arduous journey with us that spanned sandy roads and 50 degrees Celsius temperatures for a roundtrip that completed 1,600 km in 48 hours!"

Future research and collaboration between the government, La Fundación DeSdel Chaco, Fauna Australis and Wildlife Trust aim to understand how guanacos are surviving, whether local communities may play a role in conserving this key species, and how jaguars and guanacos are interacting.

from:

www.ecohealthalliance.org/news/60-rediscovering_the_guanaco_in_the_paraguay_chaco

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First Photos Ever of Jaguars in Colombian Oil Palm Plantation

ScienceDaily (June 6, 2012) — Panthera's camera traps recently produced the first photographic evidence of wild jaguars with cubs in an oil palm plantation in Colombia, including photos of two male jaguars and a female jaguar with cubs, and a video of a jaguar male.

Placed in the Magdalena River valley, these camera traps were set to gather new data about the impact of Colombia's ever-increasing oil palm plantations on jaguars. Panthera's scientists are working to understand the implications of these habitat changes on jaguars and their ability to travel and reproduce, as well as the impacts palm plantations have on their prey species.

In Latin America and Asia, oil palm plantations result in the clearing of expansive tracts of forest on which thousands of animal and plant species depend. Data have shown that in Indonesia, tigers avoid plantations, which serve as major barriers restricting their movement, and gene flow. In Latin America, Panthera's scientists are investigating whether oil palm plantations have similar effects on jaguars.

Rare photos of a female jaguar and her cubs taken with Panthera's camera traps confirm that, at least in some cases, jaguars are willing to move through oil palm. Importantly, the photos come from a small plantation adjacent to a protected area with some indigenous habitat present -- perhaps the best case scenario for fostering jaguar use of palm oil tracts.

Panthera's Northern South America Jaguar Program Director, Dr. Esteban Payan, explained, "Typically, jaguars can move across human-dominated landscapes by travelling through riparian forests or using road underpasses, but until now, scientists had no photographic proof that jaguars entered oil palm developments in this region."

Payan added, "Given the extensive amount of jaguar habitat overtaken by oil palm plantations in Colombia, we hope that certain plantations can be part of the Jaguar Corridor, enabling jaguars to reach areas with little or no human disturbances."

Panthera's Jaguar Corridor Initiative seeks to connect and protect jaguar populations from Argentina to Mexico within human-dominated landscapes, such as oil palm plantations, to preserve the species' genetic diversity. Cupped between Panama to the north and a handful of South American countries, Colombia holds the key to the jaguar's passage from Central America to South America.

Panthera's Jaguar Program Executive Director, Dr. Howard Quigley, stated, "Human development in the shape of large monocultures, like oil palm plantations, are drastically changing the face of the planet, creating refugees out of wild cats by breaking up their habitats and forcing them to live within smaller, often degraded, and more isolated pockets of land. Data collected through Panthera's Jaguar Corridor Initiative are critical for oil palm growers, national policy makers and local governments in their decision making so they can account for the needs of jaguars across their range and minimize impacts on wildlife."

Panthera promotes sustainable oil palm practices, asking farmers to adhere to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Recommendations to help curb the negative impacts of extensive agriculture development on biodiversity and enable initiatives like the Jaguar Corridor to become a reality.

Quigley added, "Our data suggest that plantations can be part of a landscape mosaic that jaguars will use. But careful planning that avoids large-scale replacement of forest with huge palm oil areas will be essential if we want to avoid the kind of isolation that tigers now suffer."


A jaguar mother with her two cubs in a Colombian oil palm plantation.


A jaguar cub inspects a camera trap, set up by the cat conservation group Panthera, in a Colombian oil plantation while its sibling looks on.


A male jaguar walking through a Colombian oil palm plantation. Until now, scientists did not have photographic evidence that jaguars were using oil palm plantations as passageways in the region.


A male jaguar walks past PantheraÂ’s camera trap in a Colombian oil palm plantation.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120606132422.htm
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Neofelis:
ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00095784/00001/1j?search=jaguar

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221extra:
Jaguar v. sea turtle: when land and marine conservation icons collide



(Jaguar with its marine turtle prey. Photo by: Benjamin Barca.)

At first, an encounter between a jaguar (Panthera onca) and a green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) seems improbable, even ridiculous, but the two species do come into fatal contact when a female turtle, every two to four years, crawls up a jungle beach to lay her eggs. A hungry jaguar will attack the nesting turtle, killing it with a bite to the neck, and dragging the massive animal—sometime all the way into the jungle—to eat the muscles around the neck and flippers. Despite the surprising nature of such encounters, this behavior, and its impact on populations, has been little studied. Now, a new study in Costa Rica's Tortuguero National Park has documented five years of jaguar attacks on marine turtles—and finds these encounters are not only more common than expected, but on the rise.

"Although there are records of marine turtles predation by jaguars in other countries nowhere else the numbers of predated turtles are nearly as high. I think that the interaction in itself is very likely to be a normal predator-prey interaction," lead author Diogo Veríssimo told mongabay.com. "But the quick increase in predation observed in Tortuguero that could be a symptom of an unbalance in the ecosystem."

Over five years Veríssimo and his team recorded a total of 676 marine turtles killed by jaguars. The vast majority (over 99 percent) of those killed were green sea turtles, but jaguars also preyed on three hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) and one leatherback marine turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), the world's largest. Over the five years, more and more sea turtles were killed by jaguars, rising from an average of less than 2 found per survey to over 5.



(Flipper of marine turtle killed by a jaguar in Suriname. Photo by: Jeremy Hance.)

"With a minimum of 189 individuals predated in the last season, predation of adult turtles has now reached a magnitude never before recorded in a marine turtle rookery," the scientists write.

Why the sudden uptick in what is considered by biologists rare behavior?

"Several factors could be playing a role," says Veríssimo. "One would be a potential decrease in other jaguar prey such as peccaries or deer, as a result of hunting by local populations. Another possibility is that jaguars are being driven towards the coast as habitat is cleared and fragmented around Tortuguero National Park."

Green sea turtles are currently listed as Endangered by the IUCN Red List and are imperiled a large number of threats, including accidental bycatch, light pollution, beach development, and both legal and illegal harvesting of turtle eggs. Jaguars are less threatened than their oceanic prey, but are still listed as Near Threatened due to deforestation, prey decline, and targeting by ranchers. So, the rise in preying on endangered marine turtles by America's biggest cat begs the question: what, if anything, should be done?

Veríssimo recommends more research and monitoring before any action is taken. Future research should especially focus on the park's jaguar population, which has been little studied to date. He also notes that though the total number of marine turtles killed—676—may seem high, researchers should not see this as an alarming concern—yet.

"The nesting population of marine turtles in Tortuguero is one of the largest in the world and as such at the moment I do not think jaguar predation is a major threat. Furthermore, we need to remember that marine turtles from this population are still being harvested in Nicaragua in far greater numbers than those currently being predated," he explains, "nonetheless it rests to be seen at what levels the jaguars predation starts to level off as the increase in recent years has been fast."

Jaguar and marine turtle conservationists should begin sharing information, says Veríssimo, to "ensure that there is a landscape perspective when it comes to understanding of this predator-prey interaction."

In the meantime, marine turtles will, as they always have, risk their lives in producing the next generation, and jaguars, consummate hunters, will take advantage of the oceanic reptiles' sudden vulnerability. And nature will continue to surprise us.


(A camera trap catches jaguars feeding on a sea turtle at night when the fateful encounter occurs. Photo courtesy of: Diogo Veríssimo)


(Green marine turtle corpse after being preyed on by a jaguar in Suriname. Photo by: Jeremy Hance.)


(Green marine turtle corpse after being dragged in from the beach in Suriname. By the next day the jaguar had dragged it into the forest seen in the back. Photo by: Jeremy Hance.)

news.mongabay.com/2012/0516-hance-jaguars-sea-turtles.html

PLATE 1 (a) Green turtle Chelonia mydas and (b) leatherback turtle Dermochelys coriacea, with typical signs of jaguar Panthera onca
predation, and (c, d) camera-trap photographs of jaguars feeding o? green turtles. (All photographs GVI Costa Rica).

Full study for those if any who are interested.

Canabalism of female adult Jaguar by 2 adult male Jaguars:



Among most free-ranging carnivores, populations seem to be regulated by social interactions manifested through territoriality and aggression (Lindzey et al., 1994; Pierce et al., 2000; Adams, 2001). Instances of aggression and killing of conspecifics have been reported mostly as cases of interspecific killings (Palomares and Caro, 1999) or infanticide (Agrell et al., 1998; Soares et al., 2006), which significantly contributes to mortality of juveniles (Packer and Pusey, 1984; Balme and Hunter, 2004). Although less common than infanticide, intraspecific aggression resulting in death and consumption of an adult conspecific, i.e., cannibalism, has been reported among large terrestrial carnivores (Hunter and Skinner, 1995; Logan and Sweanor, 2001; Amstrup et al., 2006; Galentine and Swift, 2007). Among adult felids, factors that lead to cannibalism may include defense of cubs (Logan and Sweanor, 2001), defense of prey (Galentine and Swift, 2007), and apparent competition (Hunter and Skinner, 1995). Although much has been reported regarding agonistic behavior within felids, incidents of cannibalism among jaguars (Panthera onca) are rare and, so far, restricted to infanticide (Soares et al., 2006). Here, we document an observation of cannibalism of an adult female jaguar by two adult male jaguars.

On 24 November 2007, a jaguar was found ca. 3 days post-mortem in a dense semi-deciduous forest on the western border of the ranch. The carcass was lying on the ground, uncovered, under the shade of a tree and not yet consumed by scavengers. The carcass was a fully grown adult female jaguar, in apparent good nutritional condition (body weight = ca. 60 kg) and, based on wear and staining of dentition, ca. 3-4 years old. Necropsy revealed multiple wounds inflicted on the throat and forelegs, deep punctures at the first, second, and third cervical vertebrae and scapulas, and the abdominal cavity was opened. Multiple wounds matched the size and shape of a bite by a large carnivore. The left forequarter, left forepaw, and distal portions of some ribs had been partially consumed. We did not find fractures on the skull or other bones.

Full story for those interested:
www.biomedsearch.com/article/Cannibalism-among-jaguars-Panthera-onca/246536474.html

Not only is that the first reported case of cannibalism on other adult Jaguars, but it was interesting to note that it was two adult Jaguars that killed that female & the fact that they were males working together!

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to be continued....

[LeopJag]

Ewert:
See the news from Brazil altino.blogspot.com.br/2007/03/ona-luta-com-pit-bulls.html


jaguar FIGHT WITH PIT BULLS
There are about three months, the farmer Edilberto Afonso de Moraes, the Concrete, was booked for supervision of IBAMA for putting jaguar to fight against four cockfight pit bull breed dogs.

To the delight of the audience Dogs have killed and seriously injured ounce out of the fight. But just surviving and remains with the farmer, who became the trustee of the animal.

On Tuesday, Eriel Punch Lima was killed with a shot to the head during the night because tambaqui fished without authorization Spawning on the farm, the property of Gilberto Afonso de Moraes, brother of former Deputy Junior Concrete, both sons farmer Concrete.

Three days later, two gunmen, presented to police as watchmen, were instructed by the lawyer so comical Florindo Poersch, president of the OAB-Acre, to claim that the fisherman was killed by other fishermen during a shootout by disagreement on sharing of fish.

There are hundreds of families jobless and hungry, they were transferred to the flooded areas around the farm.

The most comical story is having to watch the defense that the press is the murderers with the claim that the right to the family property had been violated.

Besides creating oxen, fish, jaguars and fighting cocks, Moraes family can wreak other offspring to defend their interests in strategic positions in public life Acre.

I realize that life back to worthless in Acre. Pretty soon begins deforestation for planting of sugarcane, soybeans, oil and gas exploration ...

It is the arena of the forest.

altino.blogspot.com.br/2007/03/ona-luta-com-pit-bulls.html

Rare male jaguar photographed in SE Arizona

By Associated Press on Thu, Jun 27, 2013
POSTED: 8:28 am


This photo released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows a remote camera that photographed a rare male jaguar west of the proposed Rosemont Mine site in the mountains southeast of Tucson.

TUCSON (AP) — New photos show that a rare male jaguar has been roaming the Santa Rita Mountains’ eastern flank for at least eight months.

The Arizona Daily Star reports that remote cameras have photographed the big cat in five locations on seven occasions since October. Photos were provided to the Star this week by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Federally financed remote cameras photographed the jaguar west of the proposed Rosemont Mine site in the mountains southeast of Tucson.

This is the only jaguar known to live in the United States since a 15-year-old known as Macho B died in Arizona in March 2009.

The photographs come as federal wildlife officials consider designating more than 1,300 square miles in New Mexico and Arizona as critical habitat for the jaguar.

www.abqjournal.com/main/215257/abqnewsseeker/rare-male-jaguar-spotted-in-se-arizona.html
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Jaguar Kills Caiman



On the Prowl
On August 25, photographer Paul Donahue got a call: A large male jaguar had been spotted on the hunt in central Brazil's Tres Irmãos River.
Donahue, who tracks jaguar sightings for ecotourism operator Southwild in Mato Grasso, arrived at the scene to find an animal named Mick Jaguar hidden in thick grass, stalking a nearby group of caiman yacaré, a crocodile relative native to South America.
"Over the next 30 to 40 minutes we watched the jaguar very slowly slink along in the direction of the yacaré," he wrote in his field notes.
The largest of South America's cats, jaguars are good swimmers and regularly prey on fish, turtles, and caimans. They also eat larger animals such as deer, peccaries, capybaras, and tapirs.




All Wet
The jaguar slipped into the water and swam across to the sandbar (pictured), where a roughly 120-pound (54-kilogram) yacaré was basking in the sun, facing away from the water and the approaching predator, Donahue said.
"A week earlier we had watched this same cat approach caiman on the same sandbar without success, and we were expecting a similar result this afternoon," he wrote.
"Just the same, our boat was positioned perfectly, with the sun behind us and very close to the yacaré, so whatever happened was going to happen right in front of us."



Attack
Reaching the sandbar, the big cat rose slowly out of the water, and then suddenly pounced on the yacaré.
Named Mick Jaguar, the animal—known for its damaged right eye—had been observed before in 2011 and previously in 2013. Since 2004 Donahue and colleagues have recorded about 88 jaguars in the area of the Meeting of the Waters State Park, and since mid-June they've identified 22 individuals.
The big cats currently live in isolated populations scattered across North and South America, which is part of the reason the species is listed as "near threatened" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.



Ready for the Kill
Jaguars are ambush killers, dispatching their prey by piercing the skull or neck with a single speedy bite. Their strategy differs from that of most other cats, which grab their prey's throat and suffocate it.



Fatal Bite
The jaguar grabbed the yacaré first with its right front paw, then bit the reptile's back a little below the head.
The predator then quickly adjusted its bite to the base of the yacaré's skull—the manner in which a jaguar normally kills—then wrestled the yacaré into a dragging position and headed back across the inlet, Donahue recounted in his field notes.



Speedy End
The jaguar carries off his prize, which took just a few seconds to capture, Donahue said.
"We all just stood there with our mouths hanging open, not believing what we had just witnessed," he said.
"We had seen kills before, but nothing so spectacular and horrific nor at such close range. It's made me think a lot about the fragility of life and the fine line between life and death."

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/09/pictures/130906-caiman-jaguar-animals-science-photos-brazil-attack/

[LeopJag]

JAGUARS HUNTING AND KILLING LARGER PREY

OP'ed by Felis Rex

This account is from 1900 and shows a jaguar hunting a tapir.

My gun went to my shoulder, but before I had taken aim the jaguar gathered itself and sprang into the reeds. At the same moment a loud grunt and shrill whistle broke the stillness, and a huge tapir with the jaguar clinging by its sharp claws to the animal's back went tearing through the tall reeds. The terrified tapir was running toward some thick underbrush, evidently with the hope of dislodging the jaguar. The big cat had fastened its teeth in the back of the tapir's neck, but had not reached a vital spot. If the tapir could succeed in reaching the thick undergrowth it possibly could scrape the jaguar off its back. Myself and my men followed as fast as we could. Once I thought the tapir would shake the jaguar off, but the latter got a fresh grip with its jaws, this time on the under part of the tapir's neck.

Just as they reached the edge of the thick underbrush, the poor tapir fell upon its knees with the jaguar still clinging to its throat and drinking its life blood. The rest of the struggle was brief, and the tapir quickly succumbed.

www.oldandsold.com/articles35/animals-25.shtml

by Pict, this horse survived a jaguar attack


also from Pict, a tapir which had to feel the skull bite of a jaguar.



There are other animals which had to share that fate:



according to Pict, there are some remarkable images of skulls showing puncture holes..

[Ceratodromeus]

Accounts of predation on caiman by Jaguar:



"In September 1995, we
found the remains of a female C. crocodilus (skull
length 18.5 cm, estimated total length 1.3 m)
adjacent to a depredated nest with the remains of
12 eggs scattered around the nest. In June 1999,
we found a male M. niger 3.8 m TL that
apparently had recently been killed by a jaguar.
Based on the paw marks around the site, the
caiman had been attacked by the jaguar while on
a thick mat of floating vegetation in a canal
located along the margin of Lago Mamiraua´. In
August 2007, a camera trap set along a trail in the
Mamiraua´ Reserve captured a photograph of a
jaguar with the remains of a C. crocodilus in its
mouth. The photograph was taken in low
restinga forest habitat, approximately 30 m from
the nearest water body, and the estimated size of
the caiman, between 1.2 and 1.5 m TL, is
consistent with it being an adult female.
A camera trap recorded an adult female jaguar
locating and consuming the eggs of a M. niger
nest at Lago Tracaja´ (Mamiraua Reserve) on 17
December 2008. The jaguar found the nest at
1157 h and remained at the nest eating the eggs
until 1313 h. It then left and returned at 1345 h for
a brief visit (3 minutes), and again the following

morning at 0842 h, but the jaguar had apparently

consumed all the eggs on its initial visit."

...
"Caimans were eaten by jaguars only in
seasonally flooded habitats—two sites in Amazonian
varzea flooded forest, two in the
Brazilian Pantanal, and two in Venezuela. One
of these was localized in the Venezuelan Llanos
and the other in the north central region, in a
site where 73% of the cover was represented by
seasonally flooded lowland savanna or seasonally
flooded semideciduous forest (Table 2).
Caimans were the most frequent reptilian prey
for jaguars in four of six seasonally flooded
habitats. At one Venezuelan site, caimans were
consumed as frequently as squamates. In the
Mamiraua´ Reserve, 54% of the prey items consumed
by jaguars were reptiles, and 48% of these
were caimans. In one Pantanal site, caimans were
the only reptiles preyed on by jaguars"


Reference material
Da Silveira, Ronis, et al. "Depredation by jaguars on caimans and importance of reptiles in the diet of jaguar." Journal of Herpetology 44.3 (2010): 418-424.

[Ceratodromeus]

Footage of a ~142kg jaguar originally posted by Chui on Carnivora -- impressive and fascinating footage for sure.

[Infinity Blade]

Sept 29, 2013 12:23:20 GMT 5 LeopJag said:

also from Pict, a tapir which had to feel the skull bite of a jaguar.

About a year ago some people on Reddit shared this pic but one user questioned the story behind this; i.e. that it was a jaguar responsible for this kind of damage.

Well, good news: the story checks out! Just so I don't forget, this is from the collection of Felipe Süssekind, a researcher who has done work on jaguars. He has a flickr account and he uploaded the picture onto that site (he also uploaded the two other photos LeopJag posted after this one).

www.flickr.com/photos/felipesussekind/4889436635/in/photostream/

A quick copy and paste of the caption into Google Translate (not always the most accurate translator, I know, but I think it's good enough for these purposes) says "Tapir skull preyed by jaguar Gadonça Project Collection, headquartered at Fazenda San Francisco, in Miranda, MS. The jaguar's bite broke the top of its muzzle.".

[TheLionBoy]

SHAKA THE MALE OF 131,06 KILOS FROM SOUTHERN PANTANAL
photographed by: Garth Hovell
''On my last safari to the Pantanal in Brazil we interrupted this huge male Jaguar named Shaka, after the African warrior king, while mating. As you can see he was not impressed with us but my guests found it incredibly exciting. Who wouldn’t? . . . ''

[TheLionBoy]

credits: onçafari
Sombra big male

[TheLionBoy]

Jaguar with a huge caiman kill

[TheLionBoy]

[TheLionBoy]

Wild jaguar conservation necessary in Mesoamerica
"A large gene-based survey reveals the need for continued wild Jaguar conservation in Mesoamerica.

Today, a research group has published the largest-ever wild jaguar gene-based survey. The report is based on nearly 450 jaguar scat samples collected in Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. The analysis, published today in the journal PLOS ONE was led by the American Museum of Natural History and global wildcat conservation organization Panthera.

This work identifies areas which require heightened conservation to protect wildlife in the Mesoamerican region and punctuates the importance of large-scale genetic monitoring efforts.

By collecting scat samples, the researchers were able to gather large DNA samples non-invasively. Big cats can pose problems for researchers, as they are difficult to capture and handle. As the samples quickly degrade in the tropical weather, a large amount of laboratory work must be done in order to analyze the DNA successfully."

www.earth.com/news/wild-jaguar-conservation/

[TheLionBoy]

Jaguars can kill large prey and dolphins

[TheLionBoy]

An old documentary about jaguars
youtu.be/g2leQJCobgg

[TheLionBoy]

Jaguar mums give up baby secrets
Jaguars are one of the most elusive of large animals, reluctant to be filmed or tracked in their natural habitat.

But now biologists have finally managed to learn one of the big cat's secrets; how often it gives birth.

An ongoing study in Costa Rica, one of the last strongholds of the jaguar, has revealed that females in the wild give birth every 22 to 24 months.

Knowing the reproductive behaviour of the species will be vital information in helping to protect the species.

Numbers of jaguars, the third largest of all cat species and the largest in the New World, are declining.

The big cat is occasionally sighted in Arizona and New Mexico in the US, and populations remain within Mexico and south through Central America and into South America, including much of Amazonian Brazil.

But the species is listed as Near Threatened by the World Conservation Union.

If conservationists are to estimate how the last remaining populations of jaguar might grow, they need to know three things: how many cubs females have in each litter, how many of those cubs survive on average, and how often females give birth to new litters.

But most information about the reproductive habits of jaguars comes from observations in zoos, which may not reflect how jaguars reproduce in the wild. Even in captivity, researchers have been rarely able to document how often females give birth to new litters.

So Eduardo Carrillo and Joel Saenz of the National University in Heredia, Costa Rica and Todd Fuller of the University of Massachusetts, in Amherst, US embarked on an ongoing study of jaguars living in the Corcovado National Park in west Costa Rica.

The study began in 1990 after Carrillo saw a female jaguar walking with a single cub across a beach in the park during the day.

"At that time there were few jaguar studies and the lack of information was an important issue when making management decisions about jaguar conservation," says Carrillo. "So in 1994 we decided to radio mark jaguars. In 2003 we began using camera traps."

During the study, they found that jaguars in the park feed mainly on peccaries and marine turtles.

The diet surprised the biologists because an adult jaguar is capable of eating any animal that crosses its path, including people, though there is no record of a wild jaguar ever having attacked a person in the wild.

Jaguar
An elusive jaguar caught on camera one month ago
They also managed to follow a single female jaguar for three and a half years, by using the radio collar to triangulate her position and identifying her particular paw prints left in the mud.

In March one year, they saw the female being attended to by an adult male. By late May or early June she gave birth, and was seen accompanied by a single cub in July.

That cub remained with its mother for 19 to 20 months. Then some 22 months after she had first given birth, Carrillo noticed she was again pregnant, and was seen with a new cub a month or two later.

That confirms that wild jaguars seem to give birth once every 22 to 24 months, and that juvenile jaguars leave the company of their mother after 18 to 24 months, the team report in the journal Mammalian Biology.

Jaguars are thought to give birth to more than cub on average, though it is unclear how many usually survive until adulthood.

"One of the main questions about jaguars is their natural birthing habits," says Carrillo. "We have little knowledge about this until now."

However, despite the team's camera traps recording pictures of adult jaguars, the mothers are still proving protective of their offspring.

"We have pictures of pregnant females, but we have never taken a picture of a female jaguar with its cubs."

news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8074000/8074124.stm