Jaguar

Name and taxonomy

The name jaguar probably comes from the Tupi-Guarani word yaguara, a wild beast that overcomes its prey in one bound. In Guyana, people add the suffix ete to make jaguarete, the true beast, because jaguar can mean other animals too. The species name onca comes from the Portuguese onca, a spotted cat larger than a lynx. In Brazil the cat is called onca-pintada, the painted onca, and in Spanish it goes by yaguarete, otorongo or tigre. Carl Linnaeus described the jaguar in 1758 as Felis onca, and Reginald Pocock later moved it into Panthera.

Pocock named eight subspecies in 1939 from skulls and their places of origin, and by 2005 nine were in use. Genetic work found a smooth north to south gradient in size and form, but no real subspecies boundaries. Since 2017 the jaguar is treated as a single species with no living subspecies. Two fossil forms, P. o. augusta in North America and P. o. mesembrina in South America, are still named, though a 2024 study questioned them. DNA from 84 South American jaguars showed that gene flow across Colombia was high in the past.

Evolution and relatives

The Panthera line split from the rest of the cat family several million years ago, with estimates from about 4 to 12 million years. Some genetic studies make the jaguar the sister species of the lion, while others place the lion closer to the leopard. The jaguar line seems to have begun in Africa and reached Eurasia about 1.95 to 1.77 million years ago. Many authors derive the living jaguar from the Eurasian Panthera gombaszogensis, though that link is disputed. Its ancestor then crossed the Bering land bridge into North America in the Early Pleistocene.

The oldest fossils of the modern species come from North America and date to about 850,000 to 820,000 years ago. Mitochondrial DNA from 37 jaguars suggests today's populations arose in northern South America between 510,000 and 280,000 years ago. Jaguars died out in North and Central America in the Late Pleistocene and later moved back north. A fossil from Oregon Caves National Monument is about 38,600 years old, far north of any living jaguar.

Appearance

The jaguar is a compact, deep-chested cat with short, thick legs and a large, rounded head. It stands 57 to 81 centimetres at the shoulder, and the head and body run 112 to 185 cm. The tail adds 45 to 75 cm, the shortest tail of any big cat. Weight ranges from 68 to 136 kilograms, with about 100 kg typical for a Pantanal male. Size grows from north to south: Honduran males average 57 kg, while the biggest males on record reached 158 kg. Females are about 10 to 20% smaller than males.

The coat runs from pale yellow to rusty red, with a whitish belly. Solid black spots cover the head, neck and legs, and on the flanks they open into rosettes with one or more spots inside. A leopard's rosettes are smaller, more numerous and empty in the middle. Spots along the spine often join into a dark line, and the tail ends in black bands. Forest jaguars tend to be darker and smaller than those of open country.

Black jaguars carry a dominant allele caused by a deletion in the melanocortin 1 receptor gene. In bright light their rosettes still show through the dark fur. Black cats are commoner in dense rainforest and are more active by day, so the colour probably hides them in deep shade. The first black jaguar in northern Mexico was photographed by a camera trap in 2004.

Habitat and range

The jaguar favours dense, wet lowland forest, and it lives in rainforest, cloud forest, dry deciduous forest and gallery forest along rivers. It also uses seasonally flooded savanna, mangrove swamp and reed beds, and it is almost always near water. It avoids open grassland and true desert, and in arid country it follows the watercourses. It has been recorded up to 3,800 metres, but it is scarce in montane forest and absent above about 2,700 m in the Andes. Healthy populations need three things: water, thick cover and enough prey.

Around 1900 the jaguar ranged over about 19,000,000 square kilometres, from the southern United States to southern Argentina. By 2000 that area had fallen to about 8,750,000 km², roughly 46% of the old range. The cat is now found from Mexico through Central America and across South America to Paraguay and northern Argentina. It is extinct in El Salvador and Uruguay, and the Amazon basin holds the largest continuous population. GBIF holds records from 33 countries, which includes zoo animals and old records outside the living range.

In the 19th century jaguars lived in California, Colorado, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. The last breeding den known in the United States was in California's Tehachapi Mountains before 1860. The last Texas jaguar was shot in 1948, and an Arizona female was shot in 1963. Between 1996 and 2024 eight jaguars were photographed in the south-western United States, all wandering males from Mexico.

Diet and hunting

The jaguar eats only meat, and more than 85 prey species have been recorded. A review of 53 diet studies found prey from 1 to 130 kilograms, with a preference for animals of 45 to 85 kg. Capybara and giant anteater were the most selected prey, followed by marsh deer, tamandua, collared peccary and agouti. In flooded country it takes caiman, anaconda and river turtles, and in the Pantanal fish such as catfish, pacu and piranha. Where wild prey is scarce it kills cattle, and on one Pantanal ranch cattle made up 46% of jaguar kills.

The jaguar hunts by stalk and ambush, not by chase. It walks slowly along trails and river banks, listens, then creeps close and pounces from cover. It will leap into water after a capybara and catch it before it dives. Unlike other big cats, it often kills a mammal with a bite through the back of the skull, straight into the brain. The same bite cracks the shells of river turtles and tortoises. Its canine bite measures about 887 newtons, the third strongest among cats after the tiger and lion.

After a kill the cat drags the carcass into cover, sometimes several hundred metres away. It is strong enough to haul a heifer up a tree above flood level, and one dragged a 34 kg turtle 91.5 metres. It starts eating at the neck and chest and takes the heart and lungs first.

Behaviour and social life

Most jaguars hunt at night and in twilight, but the pattern follows the prey. In the Amazon and the Pantanal it hunts largely by day, while in the Atlantic Forest it is nocturnal. It rests in thickets, caves and deep shade, and in the hot season it may lie half in a stream. It swims well, and jaguars have crossed at least 1.3 kilometres of open water between islands and the shore. It climbs when it needs to, but less than a cougar.

Adults live alone except for a mother with cubs and a pair during mating. A female home range covers about 15 km² in the Pantanal, 54 km² in the Amazon and 233.5 km² in the Atlantic Forest. Male ranges are larger: 25 km² in the Pantanal, 180 km² in the Amazon and up to 807.4 km² in the Cerrado. A male's range overlaps those of two or three females, and he defends it against other adult males.

Fights between males are rare, and cats usually avoid each other. In the Venezuelan Llanos and the Pantanal, pairs of males have formed coalitions that patrol, hunt and mate together. Density is highest in the Pantanal, at about 10 to 11 adults per 100 km², and far lower in most forest sites.

Communication and senses

The jaguar roars, or rather grunts, in a hoarse series of five or six notes to signal over long distances. Cats answer each other, and long bouts of counter-calling are heard in the wild. A female in heat calls late at night and at dawn, and males reply with deeper, rougher calls. Hunters copy that call with a hollow gourd to draw a jaguar within range. A soft snort, called prusten, serves as a greeting, in courtship and when a mother calms her cubs. Cubs bleat, gurgle and mew, and a mother mews to keep contact with them.

The cat marks its range by scraping the ground and trees and by spraying urine and leaving droppings in prominent places. Like other cats, the jaguar sees well in dim light and relies on hearing to locate prey on a dark trail.

Reproduction and life cycle

Jaguars can breed all year, but mating rises from December to March and most births fall in the wet season, when prey is plentiful. A female is in heat for 6 to 17 days on a cycle of about 37 days. She calls and roams to find a male. A pair may stay together for up to five days and mate many times a day. Once she has mated, the female drives the male away, and she will not tolerate him near the cubs.

Gestation lasts 91 to 111 days. A litter holds one to four cubs, usually two, each weighing about 700 to 900 grams. Cubs are born blind and open their eyes at about two weeks. They take milk alone for 10 to 11 weeks. At five or six months they begin to follow their mother on hunts. By 15 to 18 months a young jaguar makes its own kills inside its mother's range, and it disperses at 16 to 24 months.

Females mature at about two to two and a half years, and males at three to four. A male sometimes kills cubs, and in one case in Emas National Park DNA showed the killer was their own father. A mother hides her cubs and distracts a male with courtship to protect them. Wild jaguars live about 11 to 12 years, and a captive cat has reached 28 years.

Predators and threats

An adult jaguar has no natural predator and sits at the top of its food web. People are its only real enemy. Ranchers shoot jaguars that kill calves, and cats are often shot on sight even where the law protects them. In Panama, 220 of 230 jaguars killed between 1998 and 2014 died in revenge for livestock losses. Some cattle killers carry old shotgun wounds, which may have forced them onto easy prey.

Forest loss is the largest threat across the range, fastest in dry regions such as northern Mexico and the Argentine pampas. Roads open forest to hunters who take the cat's prey, so jaguars go hungry even where trees remain. The skin trade peaked from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, when over 15,000 jaguars a year died in the Brazilian Amazon alone. Trade fell after CITES came into force in 1973, but a new market for teeth and bones has grown in Asia. Seizures between 2012 and 2018 involved at least 857 jaguars, 482 of them from Bolivia, and 760 fangs bound for China were taken from smugglers.

Population and conservation

The IUCN Red List has rated the jaguar Near Threatened since 2002, and numbers probably fell by 20 to 25% after the mid 1990s. Around 170,000 jaguars are thought to remain, most of them in the Amazon. National listings are harsher: Argentina rates the cat Critically Endangered, Ecuador and Mexico Endangered, and Brazil Vulnerable. In the United States it is listed as Endangered and NatureServe ranks it N1, the most imperilled level. iNaturalist holds 8,641 observations of the species.

The jaguar is on CITES Appendix I, so all commercial trade in the cat or its parts is banned. Hunting is illegal in most range countries, though many allow a rancher to shoot a problem animal, and Bolivia permits trophy hunting. In 1986 Belize created the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, the first reserve set up for jaguars. In 1999 scientists from 18 countries mapped 51 Jaguar Conservation Units, each large enough for at least 50 breeding cats. Corridors linking those units cover 2,600,000 km², but deforestation has already cut some links in Bolivia and Argentina.

Mexico's jaguars rose from about 4,000 in 2010 to about 4,800 in 2018 after a national strategy was adopted. Because its reserves overlap the homes of about 1,500 other mammal species, the jaguar is called an umbrella species.

Relationship with humans

Spanish conquistadors feared the jaguar, yet Charles Darwin was told that people were safe as long as capybaras were plentiful. Attacks on people are rare and most happen when a cat is cornered or wounded. Brazil did not officially record a fatal jaguar attack until 2008, and two children have been attacked in Guyana. A jaguar sometimes follows a person through the forest, which is thought to be an escort to the edge of its range.

Cattle ranching brought the cat large, slow prey, and it brought the rancher's rifle too. Studies show that only some jaguars kill cattle, and on one Venezuelan ranch pumas caused 86% of the losses to cats. Ecotourism in the Pantanal now earns local people money from live jaguars, and camera traps and detection dogs help scientists count them. Some Afro-Colombian communities in the Choco hunt the cat for meat, and Amazonian peoples such as the Baniwa have long hunted it.

In culture and myth

Across the pre-Columbian Americas the jaguar stood for power, and only the snake god ranked above it. In the Andes the Chavin culture spread a jaguar cult over most of Peru by 900 BC. Moche potters later painted it as a sign of rule. Muisca priests wore jaguar skins in rituals, and the ruler Nemequene took his name from words meaning force of the jaguar. Olmec sculptures show were-jaguars, figures with half-human, half-cat faces, said to be the children of rulers and jaguar spirits.

The Maya called the cat balam and gave its image to warriors and nobles, and it decorated tombs as a lord of the underworld. In Maya belief the jaguar took the sun through the underworld every night, and some people could turn into jaguars. The Aztecs called it ocelotl, the king of animals, and their jaguar warriors fought beside eagle warriors in animal dress. The god Tezcatlipoca, lord of night and fate, took the jaguar as his form.