Adrián Caballero and his colleagues released tracking dogs late one February morning in the hilly jungle terrain of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and from there, the chase was on. “Machete en mano,” they sometimes ran along thin game trails, sometimes sliced their way through thick foliage, following the sound of the dogs’ barking as […]
Tag: jaguars
Romance, rivalry, & resilience: Jaguars clash and thrive in the Pantanal’s wild wetlands
Third-biggest cat on Earth, muscular and low-slung, boasting one heck of a chomp, the jaguar reigns supreme atop the wild Neotropical food web. And while catching a glimpse of this burly beast across much of its forested range is no easy feat, the Pantanal –the “Kingdom of Waters,” world’s biggest freshwater tropical wetland and a […]
‘Losing Noah’s Ark’: Brazil’s plan to turn the Pantanal into waterway threatens world’s biggest wetland
As the evening sky turns violet, the animals of the Pantanal gather near the water. Capybaras swim in tight formation, roseate spoonbills add smudges of pink to the riverbanks, the rumble of a jaguar pulsates from the forest. This tropical wetland is the largest on Earth, stretching across Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, and playing host […]
Shrimp farms threaten Mexico’s mangroves and the jaguars that inhabit them
Among the spindly saline roots of the mangrove trees that line western Mexico’s coast, the jaguar is the ecosystem’s apex predator. Yet despite being at the top of the food chain, its existence is threatened by the abundance of another, much smaller species: the whiteleg shrimp. Aquaculture of whiteleg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei), or Pacific white […]
Elusive jaguarundi inspires biologists to share data across Latin America
The jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) seems to lack distinction, at least to human eyes. It doesn’t have spots or stripes. It’s not an exceptional climber. It’s not endangered, or endemic to any one region. At 4-7 kilograms (9-16 pounds), it’s neither the biggest cat in the Americas, nor the smallest, nor even the biggest of the […]
Jaguar release offers a lifeline to Gran Chaco’s lonely big cats
The lowland forest of El Impenetrable National Park in northern Argentina sprawls across the hot, swampy green of the Gran Chaco biome, home to South America’s largest mammals and thousands of plant species. It’s a critical conservation unit for the protection of one of the planet’s most deforested ecosystems, yet it’s missing an important resident: […]
Mystery grows after Jaguar seen on trail camera in Arizona – the 8th sighting in the last 25 years of the animal rarely spotted in the US
A new jaguar has was spotted in southern Arizona, becoming only the eighth documented in the southwest US since 1996, according to wildlife officials. Jason Miller, a hobbyist wildlife videographer, captured the elusive predator on December 20 on his trail camera in the Huachuca Mountains. A camera caught the animal around 8.27pm when motion was […]