50 Fun Facts About Jaguar

What is the jaguar's scientific name?

It is the only living Panthera species native to the Americas; Linnaeus first named it Felis onca in 1758.

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

Only the tiger and the lion are bigger; it is the largest cat in the Americas.

What is the maximum recorded weight of a jaguar?

Most weigh 56 to 96 kg; jaguars in Venezuela and Brazil are much larger than those in Mexico.

What is the jaguar's unusual method of killing mammal prey?

The same bite pierces the shells of turtles and tortoises; some think it evolved for cracking armoured reptiles.

Among cats, where does the jaguar's bite force rank?

A 100 kg jaguar can bite with about 4.9 kN at the canines and 6.9 kN at the carnassials.

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

The jaguar is also stockier, with a squarer head and shorter legs.

What is a 'black panther' in the Americas?

Melanism comes from deletions in the melanocortin 1 receptor gene, inherited through a dominant allele.

In which habitat are black jaguars found at higher densities, their dark coats hiding in deep shadow?

They are also more active in daytime than spotted jaguars.

The word 'jaguar' may come from a Tupi-Guarani word meaning what?

In Guyana people say jaguareté, adding a suffix meaning 'true beast', because 'jaguar' also applies to other animals.

The species name 'onca' comes from the Portuguese word for what?

The English word 'ounce' for the snow leopard has the same origin.

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

The oldest North American jaguar fossils date to about 850,000 to 820,000 years ago.

Which Eurasian fossil cat is often suggested as the ancestor of the living jaguar?

Modern populations evolved in northern South America between 510,000 and 280,000 years ago and later recolonised the north.

Since 2017, how many jaguar subspecies are recognised among living animals?

Pocock listed eight in 1939 and nine were accepted by 2005, but genetics found only a north-south cline, not true subspecies.

Which big cat has the shortest tail?

At 45 to 75 cm it is the shortest of any big cat; the legs are also short for a cat of its weight.

What is the jaguar's preferred prey weight range?

An analysis of 53 diet studies found prey ranging from 1 to 130 kg.

Which two animals were the most selected jaguar prey in an analysis of 53 diet studies?

Marsh deer, tamandua, collared peccary and black agouti are also taken when available.

In the Brazilian Pantanal, jaguars feed primarily on what?

Caiman, thorny catfish, pacu and red-bellied piranha are all on the menu; jaguars are excellent swimmers.

What hunting strategy does the jaguar use?

It attacks from cover in the target's blind spot; its ambushing skill is considered nearly peerless in the animal kingdom.

How strong is a jaguar when it comes to moving a kill?

It does this to keep kills above flood levels, and can swim carrying a large kill.

Jaguars begin eating a kill at which part?

They consume the heart and lungs first, then the shoulders.

Jaguars have been recorded swimming between islands and the shore over distances of at least how far?

They play and hunt in the water, possibly more than tigers do, and climb trees less often than cougars.

What is the jaguar's long-distance call described as?

Prusten, a low snort, is used for greeting and by mothers comforting cubs.

How long is a jaguar's gestation?

Females in the Pantanal had one or two cubs, which open their eyes after two weeks.

How long do jaguar cubs stay in the birth den before joining their mother on hunts?

They are weaned at three months and remain with their mothers for up to two years.

How long can captive jaguars live, compared with a wild lifespan that rarely passes 11?

Generation length in the wild is 9.8 years.

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

Females hide cubs and distract males with courtship behaviour to guard against infanticide.

What is the jaguar's status on the IUCN Red List?

It has held that listing since 2002; numbers probably fell 20 to 25% from the mid-1990s.

What are 'Jaguar Conservation Units'?

There are 51 of them across 36 regions from Mexico to Argentina, linked by planned corridors.

Where was the world's first protected area for jaguar conservation established in 1986?

Belize and Guatemala still see jaguars killed in conflicts with people and for local trade.

Roughly what share of its early-20th-century range had the jaguar lost by 2018?

The Amazon rainforest is the only remaining stronghold, and it is being fragmented fast.

In which two countries is the jaguar considered locally extinct?

Its range still runs from the southwestern United States to northern Argentina.

How many jaguars were photographed in the southwestern United States between 1996 and 2024?

A rancher from Douglas, Arizona, met one in the Peloncillo Mountains in 1996 and turned into a trail-camera researcher.

In which US state was the only recorded active jaguar den with breeding adults and kittens, before 1860?

The Tehachapi Mountains den is the sole record; jaguars persisted in California until about 1860.

When was the last confirmed jaguar in Texas shot?

It died near Kingsville; Arizona's last female was shot in 1963, and the state banned jaguar hunting in 1969.

How much land did the US Fish and Wildlife Service set aside for jaguar protection in Arizona and New Mexico in 2012?

The 2019 Jaguar Recovery Plan uses Interstate 10 as the northern boundary of the recovery unit.

Mexico's jaguar population grew from an estimated 4,000 in 2010 to roughly how many in 2018?

The rise is credited to a national conservation strategy developed from 2005 and published in 2016.

In the 1960s, roughly how many jaguars a year were killed for skins in the Brazilian Amazon alone?

The skin trade collapsed after CITES was enacted in 1973.

Between 2014 and early 2019, 760 jaguar fangs seized in Bolivia were destined for which country?

Undercover work found the smuggling was run by Chinese residents in Bolivia; 482 of 857 traded jaguars in 2012-18 were Bolivian.

In Panama, how many of 230 jaguars were killed over livestock predation between 1998 and 2014?

Retaliatory killing by ranchers is a major threat across Central and South America.

What did the Aztecs call the jaguar?

They regarded it as king of the animals; their elite jaguar warriors were the ocelotl, opposite the cuauhtli eagle warriors.

In many Mayan languages the jaguar was called what?

It symbolised warriors and the elite, and was linked with the underworld, decorating tombs and grave goods.

Which culture is famous for 'were-jaguar' sculptures showing stylised jaguars with half-human faces?

They were found on the Yucatan Peninsula, in Veracruz and Tabasco.

A jaguar cult spread by which early Andean culture was accepted over most of Peru by 900 BC?

The later Moche used the jaguar as a power symbol on their ceramics.

The name of the Muisca ruler Nemequene meant what?

The Muisca held the jaguar sacred and wore its skins in religious rituals.

Per Darwin, indigenous South Americans said jaguars were no threat while what was abundant?

The Spanish conquistadors, by contrast, feared the animal; the first official Brazilian record of a jaguar killing a person dates only to 2008.

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

Royal Aztecs also decorated themselves in jaguar skins.

What scientific name did Carl Linnaeus give the jaguar in his 1758 Systema Naturae?

The cat was moved into the genus Panthera much later; several subspecies proposed in the 19th and 20th centuries were eventually collapsed into one.

Indigenous peoples in Guyana add the suffix 'eté' to the animal's name, giving 'jaguareté'. What does it mean?

The suffix distinguishes the big cat, since 'jaguar' is also applied to other animals.

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

Similar coalitions were recorded in the Venezuelan Llanos; elsewhere the cat is solitary except for mothers with cubs.

In which year was the first official record of a jaguar killing a human in Brazil?

Most known attacks happen when the animal has been cornered or wounded; the Spanish conquistadors nonetheless feared it.