Jaguar Profile                  by: Jacob Beaty

Jaguars are the largest of South America's big cats. They once roamed the southern tip of the continent north surrounding the U.S.-Mexico border. To this very day there is only a certain amount of jaguar found in South and Central America, particularly in the Amazon basin. 

Jaguars are one of very few cats that love the water. in fact, they are very good swimmers.They use the water to fish for fish, turtles, or caimans. Jaguars also eat larger animals such as deer, peccaries, capybaras, and tapirs. They often climb trees to makes an ambush, killing their prey with one powerful bite.

Most jaguars are tan or orange with distinctive black spots, dubbed "rosettes" because they are shaped like roses. Some jaguars are so dark they appear to be spotless, though their markings can be seen on closer inspection.

Jaguars live alone and define territories of many square miles by marking with their waste or clawing trees.

Females have litters of one to four cubs, which are blind and helpless at birth. The mother stays with them and defends them fiercely from any animal that may approach—even their own father. Young jaguars learn to hunt by living with their mothers for two years or more.

Jaguars are still-hunted for their attractive fur. Ranchers also kill them because the cats sometimes prey upon their livestock. The name jaguar is derived from yaguara, a word from an indigenous South American language that means “wild beast that overcomes its prey with a single bound.”

Jaguars Habitat

 The jaguar lives in biodiversity-rich regions of Central and South America.

It prefers forest habitats and areas close to water sources (such as wetlands, rivers, lakes etc) as it loves water and is a great swimmer.

Wildlife Conservation Society refers to jaguars as a “landscape species” and states that  “they require more than one habitat for their survival” (2).

The jaguar roams over a large area of land to hunt for prey and naturally visits many different habitats.

The jaguar thrives in relatively “healthy” habitats.

As a simplified example, the jaguar preys on white-lipped peccaries, which prey on a number of other animals in a rainforest, which in their turn feed on plants.

The plants, in their turn, get nutrition from the rainforest’s soil, which is worked by millions of insects, which need all sorts of other organic material to feed on, and so this interdependent chain of animal – plant interactions goes on and on.

So before the jaguar gets its food, lots of different components in a habitat need to connect to each other to produce various forms of life. And this is an indication of the habitat’s health.

Jaguar adaptations

Forest jaguars are much smaller in size than the ones inhabiting open areas. This may be due to the fact that forests have a smaller number of large herbivorous preys. (1)

We also know that the jaguars commonly take refuge in brush thickets (2) and, when the forest floor is flooded, can live on the trees for months (3).

I wonder if this could be another of jaguar's adaptations: the smaller the animal is, the easier it is for it to live generally on the forest floor and specifically on the trees, and avoid potential threats.

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/jaguar.html

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761554717/Jaguar_(animal).html

http://www.tropical-rainforest-animals.com/Jaguar-Animal.html

http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/Animal-bytes/animalia/eumetazoa/coelomates/deuterostomes/chordata/craniata/mammalia/carnivora/jaguar.htm