In a tract of central Brazilian wetlands, jaguars spend their days wading through chest-deep waters searching for fish. When not hunting, the big cats playfully grapple with each other back on land. Their life is unlike any other known jaguar population’s existence in the world.
Jaguars (Panthera onca), which are usually territorial loners that hunt on land, live in a wide array of habitats, ranging from North American deserts to grasslands and tropical rainforests in Central and South America. The cats are also found in the Pantanal, an immense tropical wetland — the largest of its kind in the world — that sprawls over parts of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay.
Ecologists Manoel dos Santos-Filho of the Universidade do Estado de Mato Grosso in Cáceres, Brazil, and Carlos Peres of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, knew of rumors of large numbers of jaguars sighted near Brazil’s Taiamã Ecological Station. That large ecological reserve is located in the remote, northern reaches of the Pantanal.
Jaguars (Panthera onca), which are usually territorial loners that hunt on land, live in a wide array of habitats, ranging from North American deserts to grasslands and tropical rainforests in Central and South America. The cats are also found in the Pantanal, an immense tropical wetland — the largest of its kind in the world — that sprawls over parts of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay.
Ecologists Manoel dos Santos-Filho of the Universidade do Estado de Mato Grosso in Cáceres, Brazil, and Carlos Peres of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, knew of rumors of large numbers of jaguars sighted near Brazil’s Taiamã Ecological Station. That large ecological reserve is located in the remote, northern reaches of the Pantanal.
