Amazing Jaguar

By Rita Weatherholt for http://www.AmazingTeesandMore.com

http://www.amazingteesus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=19

The sonorous uh-uh-uh-uh roar of the jaguar is at once awe-inspiring and fearsome—a fact that is emblematic of the cat’s very existence. Indeed, the jaguar has been deity, enemy, and trophy of man, depending on its place in our history and our geography.

As the world’s third largest felid, Panthera onca is the largest wild cat in the Western hemisphere, with two distinct varieties—the big cats of the Amazon jungle, and the smaller version found in northern Mexico, southern Arizona and New Mexico. Jaguars are carnivores and hunters, and for this reason, even the North American cat, while only half the size of its jungle kin at 6-8 feet in length, and 100-160 pounds, carries a big fear factor for humans. Its powerful bite—the most powerful among cats of its size—penetrates with fangs able to crush the skulls of prey as large as elk. With the largest eyes of all carnivores relative to head size, the jaguar’s “eyeshine” makes it especially adept at night hunting, and with extraordinarily acute hearing, its tracking abilities are rivaled by none.

Despite its fearsome abilities, the jaguar is a beautiful creature, each with its own unique decoration. While the jungle cats can be completely black, or have black stripes, clusters of spots, or a combination, the northern jaguar’s reddish-yellow coat is marked by dark rosettes of spots, often in a butterfly pattern, lending it the name, “tigre mariposa.” The sleek profile of the jaguar’s flattened skull was greatly admired by the pre-Columbian Olmecs, who flattened their own skulls in an effort to emulate the cat’s deistic power.

The jaguar’s history in North America begins with its migration from Eurasia nearly two million years ago. These huge prehistoric creatures roamed much of the continent, alongside mammoths, shrub oxen and sabre-toothed tigers. As the Ice Age advanced over the northern hemisphere, the jaguar population split between what is now North and South America, with the northern cats’ decreased size an evolutionary means of adapting to its new climate and limited prey. As Europeans arrived on the continent, the jaguar was still abundant. However, as human settlements increased, so too, did the hunting and slaying of jaguars whose pelts were used as coats, and whose heads were prized as trophies. By the 1600’s Spanish settlers had introduced livestock to North America, creating a deadly catch-22 for jaguars: livestock represented a tempting prey for the cats, but at the cost of more deaths at the hands of man, who saw them as a threat to their own food source.

By the mid-twentieth century, jaguars had retreated to the most remote regions of the American Southwest and northern Mexico, where they stalk through the pine and oak of the Madrean woodlands and the scrub forests of Sonoran Desert foothills—a far cry from the lush jungles of their southern cousins. For food, they feed on javelina, deer and other smaller mammals, birds and fish. Carnivores first, and hunters second, jaguars will often opt for carrion as their food source, giving rise to some doubt about their being a primary source of livestock attacks.

Today, with only 100-150 jaguars occupying the 100,000 square miles of Sonoran Desert Region, the panthera onca is an endangered species, as it has been since 1960. Moreover, its fate is becoming increasingly tenuous in the United States where, in January, 2008 the federal government made a determination to abandon jaguar recovery under the Endangered Species Act. Efforts between conservation groups in Mexico and the United States, aimed at protecting jaguars’ natural corridors and conserving the remaining population, are currently underway.
By Rita Weatherholt for Amazing Tee’s US LLC
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