Pantanal jaguars eat caimans. They often hunt them from a tree or an elevated position.

Catching a caiman is no easy task: You’re supposed to break its neck… without getting the pointed end of the animal turning back toward you. Then, the not-so-easy part is to bring the victim back up out of the water for an easier meal.

This will allow feeding the younger generation.

And, even – sometimes – sharing a piece of meat with some other friend:

To be finished with a post-prandial drink:

Denis Mayer Jr. web site

I don’t know if (and I doubt that) Calvin Klein latest technology-based perfume, Obsession for Men, can live up to the expectations it raises. This musky scent is supposed to attract women, run them wild with its potent aroma. However, wildlife photographers in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala found that it could be used to attract jaguars, cougars and pumas to the camera traps used to get pictures of the endangered cats. Apparently, this does not only attract male jaguars, but females also like the cologne from Calvin Klein.

This was so marked that Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo tried it on snow leopards too. This works! Consequently, the Snow Leopard Trust will try it in South Gobi, Mongolia. Remember that snow leopards are so difficult to find in the wild that apart from GPS collars, it may take months for experts before they can find one in some of the most difficult terrains.

I guess that this will soon lead to a Ig Nobel prize in the future. And some nice new photos, too.

Source: Wildlife Conservation Society – Guatemala Program

For example, cheetahs were submitted to a major event of reduction in genetics diversity during the last Ice Age (less than 10,000 animals fought for survival during thousands of years). Today, the enormous competition pressure brought by Man and “its civilization”, on top of the stark competition from other carnivorous mammals (like hyenas), will most certainly bring cheetah out of the African savannas in a few years (maybe less than 20 years).

Tigers are also in a nearly desperate situation today: The last wild animals are already living in relatively small Reserves where, even free in the wild, they have become tourism subjects without being fully protected from poaching or illegal culling.

This is the context when Frédéric Lepage created a series of TV documentaries about a few emblematic species (cheetah, orangutan, tiger, elephant, jaguar, polar bear): Extinctions

I strongly recommend your being in front of the TV (France 5, French TV channel), to watch the episode for Tiger, on Friday 6 August 2010 at 20h30.

Here is a femal jaguar, Lolo, and her newborn cub in Jordan’s zoo, in Canada. And, as you can notice, the young cat, proud of his spotted hair, is pleased to crush his mother under niceties and small bites.

Via Winnipeg Sun. Photos Ali Jarekji/REUTERS.

• Europe, where the sabre-tooths, lions and leopards are
• Pumas of South Africa, cheetahs of France, jaguars of England

Source: Tretrapod Zoology

This is the main reason why it often appears in the iconography (paintings as well as sculptures) that has been preserved from the fall of this astonishing civilisation brought up by the Aztecs. Some pictures of this moment in time.

Click the thumbnails to enlarge them

Jaguar (Panthera onca) was thought to be absent from the United States of America territory. But for a few years, people have been tracking the moves of two animals Macho A and Macho B within the borders of the Arizona state. Macho A was probably dead a few years ago and Macho B was now considered as the last jaguar living in the wild on US soil.

However, recently caught to give it a GPS tracking collar, Macho B was rather old (15-16 years old). After being freed again by the Arizona Game and Fish Department, it started showing troubling signs of weakness and was trapped again for a medical checkup. Verdict: Severe kidney failure. It explained too well the slow moves and gait.

In front of the severity of the illness, Macho B had to be euthanized.

During the autopsy, specialists drew a frighteningly precise conclusion: The recent catch probably affected the animal to the point of being death cause. Chemicals used to calm it down, more precisely, would have been at the origin of its troubles.

So, there is no longer any jaguar living in the wild in the USA. The only good news seems to be the signature by B.Obama of an act repelling the recent amendment by G.W.Bush that effectively put the wildlife experts at Fish and Wildlife Services and the National Marine Fisheries Service out of the loop for projects that could cause harm to endangered species. Now again, the interests of wildlife will be taken into account and the industrial companies will no longer have a free ride. Science is coming back.

Sources: Los Angeles Times, Defenders of wildlife, Futura-Sciences, Sierra Club & Wikipedia.

It was thought that jaguars had completely disappeared from Central Mexico since the beginning of the XXth Century. But here is one of these predators taken by a photographic trap in the Sierra Nanchititla Natural Reserve.

In total, there were three photos shot and scientists also found jaguar feces in this region.

It is supposed that if the animal has not been observed (yet) by human beings, it’s because of the fragmentation of its habitat forces it to walk out of view and in high-altitude mountainous zones that are not easily accessible.

Nevertheless, jaguar (Panthera onca) is still an extreemely fragile animal, whose survival is strictly not made certain by the mere presence of one isolated individual (maybe not completely alone, but it is considered that several dozen indiduals are needed to allow the difficult perpetuation of a wild species).