---
title: "What the sources say about the Jaguar | AnimalTracks.wiki"
description: "36 claims from the Jaguar profile, each beside the words of the source that backs it."
image: "https://animaltracks.wiki/images/animals/jaguar-1.webp"
canonical: "https://animaltracks.wiki/animals/jaguar/sources/"
---

# What the sources say about the Jaguar (*Panthera onca*)

> 36 claims from the Jaguar profile, each beside the words of the source that backs it. A "..." marks a cut in a quote and [brackets] an insertion.

Profile: [Jaguar](https://animaltracks.wiki/animals/jaguar/)

## Panthera onca (jaguar). Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan.

https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Panthera_onca/

| The page says | The source says |
| :--- | :--- |
| the largest cat in the Americas | Jaguars are the largest cats in the Americas and the only representative of the genus Panthera. |
| Skull-piercing jaws | they instantly kill them by piercing the back of the skull with their canines |
| a powerhouse swimmer | Jaguars are excellent swimmers |
| A skull-piercing bite that kills instantly | they instantly kill them by piercing the back of the skull with their canines |
| jaws that get through thick reptile skin and turtle shells | Their powerful jaws and canines allow them to get through thick reptilian skin and turtle carapaces. |
| Near Threatened | Jaguars are considered near threatened by the IUCN. |
| Dense tropical rainforests, the Pantanal wetlands, and river basins of Central and South America | Jaguars have a large distribution, they are found from southern Arizona and New Mexico south toward northern Argentina and northeastern Brazil ... concentrated in the Amazon Basin and includes portions of the Cerrado, Pantanal, and Chaco areas (note: forest and rivers: ADW 'prefer dense, tropical moist lowland forests' and 'generally found in habitats near water, such as rivers') |
| Caimans, capybaras, snakes, river turtles, tapirs, and peccaries | Preferred prey are large animals, such as peccaries, tapirs, and deer. They also prey on caimans, turtles, snakes, porcupines, capybaras, fish, large birds, and many other animals. (note: a representative list, as the diet field is everywhere on the site) |
| It either delivers a direct bite to the neck and then suffocates its prey, or it kills instantly by piercing the back of the skull with its canines | They either deliver a direct bite to the neck and then suffocate their prey, or they instantly kill them by piercing the back of the skull with their canines. |
| Its powerful jaws and canines also get through thick reptile skin and turtle shells | Their powerful jaws and canines allow them to get through thick reptilian skin and turtle carapaces. |
| A jaguar's canines can pierce the back of its prey's skull, killing it instantly | they instantly kill them by piercing the back of the skull with their canines |
| In the Pantanal, males average around 100 kilograms and females 76 kilograms | The largest jaguars are found in the Brazilian Pantanal, where males average 100 kg and females 76 kg. |
| In Honduras, where the smallest jaguars live, males average just 57 kilograms and females 42 kilograms | The smallest jaguars are found in Honduras, where males average 57 kg and females 42 kg. |
| In general, jaguars in dense forest are smaller than jaguars in more open habitat, possibly because large hoofed prey are more common in open country | In general, jaguars found in dense forests are smaller than those found in more open habitats, possibly because densities of large ungulate prey are greater in open habitats. |
| Jaguars have lean bodies and muscular limbs, built for power rather than speed, though they can run briefly | Jaguars have lean bodies and muscular limbs. They are built for power, not speed, although they can run briefly. |
| They are also excellent swimmers and are generally found near rivers, lagoons, or swamps | Jaguars are excellent swimmers and are generally found in habitats near water, such as rivers, slow moving streams, lagoons, watercourses, and swamps. |
| One was recorded dragging a 34-kilogram sea turtle 91.5 meters into forest cover | A jaguar was observed draging a 34 kg sea turtle 91.5 meters into the cover of a forest. |
| Black, or melanistic, jaguars are the result of a single, dominant allele | Black, or melanistic, jaguars are fairly common and are the result of a single, dominant allele. |
| their spots are usually still dimly visible against the black background | These jaguars have a base coat color of black with black spots that are usually dimly visible against the black background. |
| It either delivers a direct bite to the neck and then suffocates its prey, or kills instantly by piercing the back of the skull with its canines | They either deliver a direct bite to the neck and then suffocate their prey, or they instantly kill them by piercing the back of the skull with their canines. |
| Animal Diversity Web says its powerful jaws and canines get through thick reptile skin and turtle shells | Their powerful jaws and canines allow them to get through thick reptilian skin and turtle carapaces. |
| In jaguars the black form is the result of a single, dominant allele | Black, or melanistic, jaguars are fairly common and are the result of a single, dominant allele. |
| its spots are usually still dimly visible against the black coat | These jaguars have a base coat color of black with black spots that are usually dimly visible against the black background. |
| The jaguar (Panthera onca) kills in one of two ways | They either deliver a direct bite to the neck and then suffocate their prey, or they instantly kill them by piercing the back of the skull with their canines. (note: two ways: the source's either/or) |
| In one of two ways | They either deliver a direct bite to the neck and then suffocate their prey, or they instantly kill them by piercing the back of the skull with their canines. (note: two ways: the source's either/or) |
| a cat that can kill instantly by piercing the back of its prey's skull with its canines | they instantly kill them by piercing the back of the skull with their canines (note: vibe.reason (#858): replaces "swaggering Latin flow, and unstoppable apex dominance", which argued from geography and mood.) |

## Jaguar. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/jaguar

| The page says | The source says |
| :--- | :--- |
| Jaguars have been observed sitting quietly at the water's edge, occasionally tapping the surface with their tail to attract fish | Jaguars have been observed sitting quietly at the water's edge, occasionally tapping the surface with their tail to attract fish. |
| largest cats in the Americas and the third-largest cat species on Earth, smaller only than lions and tigers | Jaguars are the largest cats in the Western Hemisphere and the third largest overall. Only lions and tigers are bigger. |
| San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance says a jaguar's large jaw muscles let it kill prey by piercing the skull with its sharp teeth | Their large jaw muscles allow them to kill their prey by piercing the skull with their sharp teeth. |

## Hoogesteijn & Mondolfi (1996). Body mass and skull measurements in four jaguar populations and observations on their prey base. Bulletin of the Florida Museum of Natural History.

https://doi.org/10.58782/flmnh.tzja4638

| The page says | The source says |
| :--- | :--- |
| A survey of four populations found that jaguars from floodplain habitats, the Pantanal and the Llanos, were consistently larger across nearly every skull and body measurement than jaguars from forest habitats in the Amazon and Central America, and the gap held regardless of subspecies | Body mass and nine skull measurements of two floodplain (Pantanal and Llanos) and two forest (Amazon and Central America) jaguar (Panthera onca) populations, were analyzed ... Individuals from the floodplain populations were consistently larger in almost all parameters than the samples from the forest sites. The difference is independent of the subspecific status. |
| Skull size and body mass seem to track the biomass of prey each population takes more closely than latitude | Jaguar skull size and body mass seem to be more related to biomass of prey taken than to latitudinal location. |

## Eizirik et al. (2003). Molecular Genetics and Evolution of Melanism in the Cat Family. Current Biology.

https://doi.org/10.1016/s0960-9822(03)00128-3

| The page says | The source says |
| :--- | :--- |
| A study of the MC1R gene found two different deletions implicated in melanism in jaguars and jaguarundis | two different "in-frame" deletions in the MC1R gene are implicated in melanism in jaguars and jaguarundis. |

## Mooring, Eppert & Botts (2020). Natural Selection of Melanism in Costa Rican Jaguar and Oncilla: A Test of Gloger's Rule and the Temporal Segregation Hypothesis. Tropical Conservation Science.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1940082920910364

| The page says | The source says |
| :--- | :--- |
| A ten-year camera-trap study of dense tropical forest in Costa Rica found that a quarter of jaguar sightings there were melanistic, against a global average of about 10 percent across open and closed habitats combined | Based on 10 years of camera trap records of jaguar and oncilla from dense tropical forest in Costa Rica ... Twenty-five percent of jaguar records in dense forest were melanistic compared with the global average of 10% in both open and closed habitats |
| black jaguars were active more often in daylight than their spotted relatives, which lean more nocturnal and crepuscular | melanistic jaguars were more active during daylight hours compared with non-melanistic jaguars, which were more nocturnal and crepuscular. |

## Arroyo-Arce & Salom-Pérez (2015). Impact of jaguar Panthera onca (Carnivora: Felidae) predation on marine turtle populations in Tortuguero, Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Revista de Biología Tropical.

https://doi.org/10.15517/rbt.v63i3.16537

| The page says | The source says |
| :--- | :--- |
| At Tortuguero beach in Costa Rica, jaguars hunt nesting marine turtles: a study found jaguar predation rose from one turtle in 1981 to 198 in 2013 | This study assessed jaguar predation impact on three species of marine turtles ... that nest in Tortuguero beach ... Our results indicated that jaguar predation has increased from one marine turtle in 1981 to 198 in 2013. |
| the researchers concluded the jaguars are not a threat to the beach's green turtle population and are not the main cause of decline in its leatherbacks or hawksbills | we concluded that jaguars do not represent a threat to the population of green turtles that nest in Tortuguero beach, and it is not the main cause for population decline for leatherbacks and hawksbills. |