Let’s talk about the Jaguar!
#Caturday
It’s a big cat!
The jaguar, Panthera onca, is the only extant Panthera species native to the Americas. Presently, its range extends from the Southwestern United States and Mexico, across much of Central America, and south to Paraguay and Argentina. Spotted, this cat is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and resembles the leopard.
Where does it live?
The jaguar tends to live in the rain forests of South and Central America, as well as open, seasonally flooded wetlands, and dry grassland terrains. (Unfortunately, jaguars have extirpated from the United States lands.) We’re going to take this opportunity to speak more about the Ecuadorian jaguars!
Ecuador is one of the places where jaguars are prominent!
Ecuador is one of the member countries in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, alongside Indonesia, Nigeria, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, just to name a few. Ecuador’s capital city Quito was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s for having the best preserved and least altered historic centre in Latin America. Ecuador is known for its exports of bananas, shrimp, coffee, cocoa, cut flowers, and fish as well as for its status as a haven for many exotic animals.
Ecuador is one of the member countries in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, alongside Indonesia, Nigeria, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, just to name a few. Ecuador’s capital city Quito was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s for having the best preserved and least altered historic centre in Latin America. Ecuador is known for its exports of bananas, shrimp, coffee, cocoa, cut flowers, and fish as well as for its status as a haven for many exotic animals.
Ecuador is known for its biodiversity.
Look to the Napo Province.
Located far to the eastern, land-locked border of Ecuador is the Yasuni National Park. It is considered one of the most biologically diverse spots on the planet with the park itself settling on a small zone where fauna and vascular flora diversity reach their maximum levels within the Western Hemisphere. With world records for local-scale biodiversity at less than 100 sq. km, it holds titles for tree, amphibian, and bat species. In a single hectare, Yasuni has over 100,000 different species of insects — roughly all insect species in North America.
Threatened by oil drilling, colonization, deforestation, and unsustainable hunting, the park is home to an estimated 800 million barrels of crude oil. International initiatives have tried to prevent Ecuador’s expansion of its crude oil drilling to help preserve the environment.
Back to the cat:
These cats are big and slender.
Weighing in from anywhere between 77 to 285 pounds (35 to 130 kg), these cats have a body that is around 5'6" to 7'11" (1.7 to 2.4 m) long. (Their tails add an additional 20 to 26 inches (52 to 66 cm) to this length.)
- Jaguar fur varies from yellow to black and is characterized by black spots that form rosettes of different sizes. These rosettes are like fingerprints and they help to identify each animal!
- While most jaguars have yellow fur accentuated by their black spots, there are black jaguars as well! These black jaguars also have rosettes that are black! The jaguar is often confused for ocelots and leopards!
- The jaguar is at the top of the food chain and a carnivore at that! It’s registered as having over 85 species of natural prey!
- An optimistic hunter, these guys feed on the most abundant species in its ecosystem. With an extremely powerful bite, even relative to the other big cats, it has a jaw strength to pierce the shell of armored reptiles.
- In fact, jaguars employ their jaw strength to kill in an atypical way: it bites directly through the skull of prey between the ears to deliver a fatal bite to the brain! YIKES!
Alright, alright. Here’s your cat pictures:
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