‘Big Cat Week’ has begun. Let us talk, in the honor of
it, about the jaguar, since it seems to be the only non-African big cat on it,
so far.
The jaguar is the third biggest wild cat in the world;
it is twice as heavy as the leopard and can be as big as a lion, (which can
twice more heavy than the jaguar itself). The Latin-Americans call it ‘el tigre’,
which means ‘the tiger’, duh! This is why sometimes things get wonky in
translation, and South America ends up having tigers instead. The puma – the second
biggest cat in the New World – has its own share of problems with literature;
sometimes it is described as a ‘panther’, which is also the alternate name of
the leopard, especially its melanistic, black, phase. Bagheera from the ‘Jungle
Book’ franchise is a ‘panther’, rather than a ‘leopard’, as an example. Now the
puma just is not black; rather, it is uniformly colored from light grey to
tawny brown, to brick red with creamy white underparts. Temperate pumas tend to
be larger, with paler, greyish coloration, from the tropical individuals are
smaller, with richer, redder tones. The cubs, BTW, are spotted, but these spots
vanish around 1 year of age – so the giant black cat cryptids of U.S.A. most likely
are not pumas, but the ‘panther’ versions of leopards and jaguars, which have
escaped from zoos, public or private.
(Of course, wild cats as a group tend to have varied
coloration in almost all species, so I am not dismissing the possibility of
black pumas completely – it still can happen).
Back to the jaguar. Unlike the leopard or the African
lion, for example, it is a very private, introvert feline; part of the reason
why the African wildlife appears in documentaries is because it is somewhat
used to the presence of people; all those lions and leopards, cheetahs and
elephants aren’t domestic, but neither are they afraid of people too much –
hence the problem of man-eating cats, rogue elephants, etc. Animals should not fear people and vice versa, but a
healthy dose of respect between the
two must remain, or else there is going to be tragedy and blood.
Well, the jaguar? It does not appear to be a man-eater,
unlike its’ close cousins the lion and the leopard; it tends to avoid people,
which is why it is hard to film. Why? Because it used to being the underdog, so
to speak.
Not so long ago, about 10-11,000 years ago, the jaguar
shared the New World not just with the puma and the ocelot, which are smaller
than it is, but also with the American lion and the sabre-toothed cats,
Smilodon and Homotherium, which were bigger than it was, and stronger. The African
lion is particularly notorious for harassing and killing smaller carnivores,
such as hyenas, so there is no reason to assume that the American lion was any different, and probably would go after the
jaguar just as the African lion tends to go after the leopard and the cheetah.
That said, the jaguar is much stronger than the leopard and especially the
cheetah, so tackling it was probably a team effort for the American lion; the
jaguar can bite through skull bones of peccaries, and shells of armadillos and
tortoises, so if an American lion faced a jaguar one-on-one, the fight could go
either way instead.
On the other hand, Arctodus
horribilis, the extinct short-faced bear of the Americas also bit bones in
two to eat the marrow, and it was one of the biggest and strongest carnivores
of the New World; its’ relative the spectacled bear still lives in South
America, but it prefers more mountainous habitat than the jaguar, and it is
also one of the more herbivorous bears, so it probably doesn’t conflict with
the modern American big cats very often.
None of this applied to the short-faced bear – it was
a carnivore, and a hypercarnivore to boot. Between it, the American lion, the
sabre-toothed cats, and other Ice Age carnivores like the dire wolf, (yes, it
was a real animal, George Martin did not invent it, BTW), the jaguar was
usually outmatched, one way or another, hence its’ reclusive, out-of-way, rather
nocturnal, lifestyle. When the humans replaced the previous Ice Age
megacarnivores, the jaguar adjusted to this development with few changes to its’
lifestyle; it could’ve lived alongside the European colonists as did along the
previous, Native American civilizations, but—
But the European colonists brought something else with
them – livestock. The jaguar may be avoiding humans as a rule, but their pets
and especially livestock such as cattle is fair game. Hence the hunts for the
jaguar; that, and the destruction of its habitat caused America’s biggest cat
to be expatriated from about half of its previous range; it is extinct in the
U.S., Uruguay and El Salvador – yes, it may be coming back into the U.S., but
now that president Donald is trying to build his Great Wall, it probably means
more bad news for these big cats.
Speaking of Great Walls? Matt Damon’s version of it…okay,
the movie version with Matt Damon in it, did not go so well, and it can be seen
why: the plot sucks, even moreso than the plot of ‘Fifty Shades Darker’.
Sometimes the plot is not as important to the movie, the ‘LEGO Batman’ film
attests to this, but unlike the ‘Great Wall’, it had some very good acting and
the way it was delivered saved the film. The ‘Great Wall’? Not so much, even
though it did have some amazing quasi-medieval warfare in it.
Speaking of quasi-medieval warfare? Yes, by now it is
obvious that ‘For Honor’ has ballistae in it, or something like this…
The thing is, when one thinks of a ballista, one thinks of something more
similar to a medieval catapult
instead, maybe something like the torsion catapult featured in the S3 of DW,
used by William the Conqueror against Joan of Arc. In reality, the ballista
appeared back in S2 of DW, when it was used by Alexander the Great against
Attila the Hun. Essentially, it was a giant, stationary crossbow, used more in
siege warfare than in the field. It had scored the least amount of kills in
that episode, (i.e. ‘Alexander the Great vs. Attila the Hun’) and was one of
the reasons as to why Alexander the Great lost the battle: he and his team had
inferior weapons. The torsion catapult of William the Conqueror had its own
flaws, it was inferior to the cannon used by Joan of Arc, but it was still
better than the ballista.
…None of this applies to ‘For Honor’, of course – for all
of its realism, it still doesn’t go for authenticity; its’ role is to amuse,
not to educate, and in the end, it is all about the fighting, with or without a
ballista. Shall we get back to the jaguar?
There is not much left to be said about this big cat. It
has a lifespan similar to that of the leopard – 22-23 years in captivity, 14-16
in the wild. It is classified by CITES as Near Threatened, and it deserves
protection, not prosecution. Now let us sit back and enjoy the ‘Big Cat Week’.
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