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Is Jaguar a tiger or a leopard?

2024-04-02 20:18:31 38

jaguar is a leopard. jaguar The scientific name is Jaguar (Panthera onca). It is a large cat and the only extant member of the genus Panthera native to the Americas. member. With a body length of up to 1.85m and a weight of 158kg, it is the largest cat in the Americas and the third largest in the world. Its well-marked coat has pale yellow to tan fur covered with spots that transition into rosettes on the sides, although black fur appears on some individuals. The jaguar's powerful bite enables it to pierce the carapace of sea turtles and tortoises, and it employs an unusual killing method: it bites directly through the skull of its mammalian prey between the ears, delivering a fatal blow to the brain.

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The ancestors of modern jaguars likely entered the Americas from Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene via a land bridge that once spanned the Bering Strait. Today, the jaguar's range extends from the southwestern United States through much of Mexico and Central America, the Amazon rainforest, and south to Paraguay and northern Argentina. It inhabits a variety of forests and open terrain, but its preferred habitats are tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, wetlands, and wooded areas. It is an adept swimmer and is a solitary, opportunistic, stalking and ambush apex predator. As a keystone species, it plays an important role in stabilizing ecosystems and regulating prey populations.


Jaguars are threatened by habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, poaching for trade in their body parts, and killings in human-wildlife conflict situations, particularly with ranchers in Central and South America. It has been listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List since 2002. Wild populations are thought to have declined since the late 1990s. Priority areas for jaguar conservation include 51 Jaguar Conservation Units (JCUs), defined as large areas inhabited by at least 50 breeding jaguars. JCU is located in 36 geographic areas from Mexico to Argentina.


Jaguars play an important role in the mythology of indigenous peoples of the Americas, including the Aztec and Mayan civilizations.



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