And so it came to be that about last week I got to see some
very interesting photos on ngm.com – how a jaguar stalked and killed a caiman
(South American alligator); interesting not just because of the actual events
depicted in them, but because of the jaguar.
What can be told about the jaguar, where does he appear? So
far I have seen it on TV only twice, and at least the first time it was
controversial to say the least: it was an Animal Face-Off episode, facing off
against a green anaconda; unsuccessfully too. And unlike the Lion vs. Tiger
episode, which caused various arguments as to whether or not the lion really
should have won against the tiger, in case of Anaconda vs. Jaguar it was
largely unanimous: the jaguar was duped.
Let us dwell on this for the moment. For all of AFO’s
supposed data, the final CGI face-off was straightforward: the two combatants
would basically stand face to face at each other and then just charge in a
direct confrontation. Other shows, like Deadliest Warrior and Death Battle do the
same thing, but their combatants are humans, or at least – sentient creatures
who do fight like this (though they have other styles). Animals (mammals,
reptiles, fish, etc) do not do that: in the NatGeo’s photos, for example, the
jaguar clearly ambushed the caiman, attacking it from the back, not face on.
And in AFO that is exactly what happened: the CGI anaconda
and jaguar attacked each other face on. In such confrontations the bigger and
heavier animal is often the stronger combatant, which is exactly what happened:
the anaconda was able to overpower the jaguar with its mass and brute strength.
In real life this situation would probably be different: there are videos on
YouTube where a jaguar runs down and eats an anaconda instead...
The second time I saw a jaguar it was a nature documentary
called “Jaguar: the Year of the Cat” and unlike the AFO episode it was strictly
professional and real life. In this documentary, the cameras followed a life
and times of a jaguar in Belize, as it (well, technically ‘it’ was a ‘he’, because
there also was a female jaguar) lived free in the wild.
In the wild, the jaguar is a powerful and graceful wild cat,
but when it came to hunting, its record was relatively lackluster: it was able
to catch a terrapin, an armadillo and a fish – all relatively modest sized,
while larger animals – peccaries, curassows – escaped. For all of its strength
and power is not exactly the ultimate hunting or killing machine as it
may appear at first – it has its flaws.
Well, not exactly flaws – more like strokes of good and bad
luck related to its hunting strategy: ambush. This was shown particularly
vividly in case of a coati that the jaguar failed to ambush and chased up into
a tree – unsuccessfully. Size, strength and weapons are not everything in the
animal kingdom.
And what are the jaguar’s statistics in size, strength,
weight et cetera? The males can weigh up to 160 kg (that is fairly heavier than
the leopard), reaching up to 1.95 m in length. The tail can add up to another
75 cm to the overall length, and the jaguar stands about 75-76 cm in height.
By contrast, the leopard does not go over 1.65 m in length
(it is actually smallest of the big cats) with a tail up to 110 cm in length. It
weighs no more than 90-91 kg, almost half as much as the jaguar does, and
reaches up to 80 cm in height. In other words, it is a much graceful animal
than the jaguar, with a much weaker bite: according to some sources, the jaguar’s
bite is almost as powerful as a spotted hyena’s with its bone-shattering bite.
Jaguar may not go as far, but in the documentary I have seen the jaguar bit
through the terrapin’s shell without any problems – not an easy feat for
anyone, even a large animal.
The leopard’s bite, of course, is quite weaker by
comparison, but as the numbers show, the leopard is the more graceful and less
powerful animal of the two: it got more finesse. Why? The answer lies not in
anatomy, but in ecology: in New World the jaguar is the top predator of its environment;
in Old World the leopard is not – it has to content with tiger and lion and
possibly the brown bear, whereas the jaguar does not live where the grizzlies
do and the spectacled bear of South America is not only a smaller beast, it also
prefers to live in the mountains that the jaguar tends to avoid as it is too
cold for the big cat.
Admittedly, there was once a big cat in New World that
dominated the jaguar the way the tiger dominates over the leopard, and it was a
famous one: smilodon, the famous sabre-tooth. While it was alive other big cats
had to adapt to its power, and as a result both the jaguar and the puma became something
of a Jack-of-all-trade, surviving in a variety of habitats both north and south
of Panama, at least until humans came and seriously decimated their numbers...
Now both of those big cats are considered to be Near Threatened: it is far from
the worst state of affairs for an animal to be, but it is not the best either...
So there we have it, ladies and gentlemen: the jaguar. It is
big, it is powerful, it is the top cat of the Americas – and that makes it
different from the leopard, but more similar to the tiger, which is the top cat
in Asia instead: both the tiger and the jaguar are masters of their domains,
both are solitary assassins (not fighters as the lion is) and both are only big
cats that enjoy a dip in the pool, at least on occasion, as opposed to the lion
and the leopard that shun the water as the other cats do, big and small. Sadly,
humans have seriously decreased the number of the jaguar population, so now,
perhaps, it is time to go out and conserve, save our nature before it vanishes –
and the jaguar with it.
What do you think?
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