36 Fun Facts About Jaguar

What is the jaguar's scientific name?

Panthera onca is considered a keystone species: by hunting herbivores, it is thought to help keep their numbers in check.

Where does the jaguar rank in size among the world's cats?

Third largest, and so powerful that adult jaguars have no natural predators; people are the only real danger they face.

Roughly how heavy was the heaviest jaguar on record?

About 160 kg: a record male topped 158 kg, but forest jaguars run smaller than those in open country, possibly because big prey is scarcer in forests.

What is unusual about the jaguar's killing method?

Biting straight through the skull between the ears kills at once, and the same bite is strong enough to pierce turtle and tortoise shells.

In which Brazilian city did Juma, a jaguar shown at a 2016 Olympic torch ceremony, escape and get shot dead?

Manaus: after the ceremony at an army zoo there, Juma slipped her handlers, four tranquilliser darts failed to stop her, and a soldier shot her dead.

How do a jaguar's rosettes differ from a leopard's?

Larger, fewer, with a spot inside: every jaguar's pattern is also unique, so camera traps can tell individual cats apart.

What is a 'black panther' in the Americas?

A melanistic jaguar still has rosettes: darker markings that show through its black coat in bright light.

How did the ancestors of the modern jaguar reach the Americas?

Across the Bering land bridge from Eurasia, probably; much later, jaguars retreated from most of North America as the last ice age ended.

Which naturalist, hunting on a South American riverbank, examined trees deeply scored by jaguar claws?

Charles Darwin was told the jaguars sharpened their claws on those trees, but he thought they were tearing off the ragged claw tips instead.

Reginald Pocock named eight jaguar subspecies; what did later studies find?

Only gradual variation, so in 2017 the IUCN's cat specialists stopped recognising any living jaguar subspecies.

Which throat feature helps a jaguar roar?

Padded vocal folds power the roar a jaguar uses to warn off rivals, defend its territory and call for a mate.

Which country's coat of arms shows two jaguars holding a pickaxe, sugar cane and rice?

Guyana: its jaguars hold those tools and crops to stand for labour and the country's two main farm industries, sugar and rice.

What hunting strategy does the jaguar usually use?

Stalk and ambush suits a cat built for power rather than speed, so a jaguar strikes from cover instead of chasing prey down.

In Brazil's Mamirauá reserve, how long do jaguars stay up in the trees while floods cover the forest floor?

About four months, during which jaguars there feed, breed and raise their cubs up in the treetops.

Jaguars begin eating a kill at which part?

The neck and chest come first, heart included, after the jaguar drags its kill into a thicket and sometimes pulls out the guts.

About how long is a jaguar pregnant?

About 100 days, 91 to 111 in fact, and because jaguars can mate at any time of year, cubs may be born in any season.

What did DNA testing reveal about the male that killed two cubs in Emas National Park?

He was their father, which is why jaguar mothers keep even the cubs' father away and hide their young.

As of 2025, what is the jaguar's status on the IUCN Red List?

Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List, yet under the US Endangered Species Act the jaguar is protected as Endangered.

What are 'Jaguar Conservation Units'?

Priority areas for wild jaguar populations, which conservationists aim to link with corridors so the cats can still move and breed between them.

Where was the world's first protected area for jaguar conservation established?

Cockscomb Basin, Belize, grew out of zoologist Alan Rabinowitz's jaguar studies there in the 1980s.

In which South American region has the jaguar been wiped out?

The Pampas lost its jaguars as farming and ranching spread over its grasslands.

In which two countries is the jaguar considered locally extinct?

El Salvador and Uruguay have lost their jaguars, yet Argentina has shown the cat can come back, releasing jaguars into its Iberá wetlands.

What have the jaguars photographed in the southwestern US since 1996 been?

Lone wanderers: no breeding jaguars are known there, and these cats belong to the northern group that breeds in Sonora, Mexico.

In which US state did hunter James Capen Adams say he trailed a jaguar family to its den?

California: he trailed the cat with his tame grizzly, Ben, to a cliffside cave in the Tehachapi Mountains strewn with bones.

What did Mexico's 2010 and 2018 national jaguar censuses find?

A rise of a fifth, from roughly 4,000 to 4,800 jaguars, credited to a national conservation strategy built on the first census.

Which treaty now bans the international trade in jaguar skins that boomed in the 1960s?

CITES lists the jaguar on Appendix I, banning international commercial trade, yet skins are still sold illegally in some range countries.

Hundreds of jaguar fangs smuggled from Bolivia since 2014 were bound for which country?

China: undercover investigations found Chinese residents of Bolivia running the smuggling of jaguar parts.

Why were most jaguars killed in a long-term Panama survey?

Livestock revenge accounted for 220 of at least 230 recorded killings, even though Panama's law forbids killing jaguars.

What did the Aztecs call the jaguar?

Ocelotl, which Buffon borrowed to name the much smaller ocelot; the Aztecs also gave it to their elite jaguar warriors.

In many Mayan languages the jaguar was called what?

Balam: the Maya elite wore jaguar pelts as a mark of rank, and several kings put the word into their names.

Which culture is famous for its 'were-jaguar' sculptures?

The Olmecs made were-jaguar figures, though scholars such as Peter Furst have argued the creature may really be a toad.

In 19th-century South America, it was said jaguars posed little danger where which animal was plentiful?

Capybaras were the jaguar's common prey, so where they were plentiful the cats had little reason to trouble people.

Which two Aztec deities had the jaguar as their totem animal?

Tezcatlipoca and Tepeyollotl: at Tezcatlipoca's feast of Toxcatl, a young man, usually a captive, who had lived a year as the god's likeness was sacrificed.

Across much of Latin America, the jaguar is popularly called by which other wild cat's name?

Tiger: Spanish 'tigre' also means the jaguar in Latin America, which is why old hunting tales of tigres along South American rivers describe jaguars.

In which Brazilian region have male jaguars been seen forming coalitions that hunt and defend territory together?

The Pantanal: in one fish-rich reserve there, same-sex adult jaguars were even seen fishing together, travelling together and playing.

In Kipling's Just So Stories, a hedgehog and a tortoise fool Painted Jaguar and become which animals?

Armadillos: the hedgehog learned to swim and the tortoise to curl up, so Mother Jaguar's tips for telling them apart no longer worked.