In 2017 scientists published a jaguar genome and a new leopard genome, and they compared all five living Panthera cats with each other. They found that the genes of these cats do not all follow a single family tree, and one reason for this pattern is a history of hybridization between species. The genome study looked at 30 wild-caught jaguars.
Some jaguars are black, and they are called melanistic jaguars. Black (melanistic) jaguars have a 15-base-pair deletion in a gene called MC1R, and in jaguars this is a dominant version of the gene, so a jaguar needs just one copy to be black. The black coat of a jaguar comes from a different gene change than in a leopard, because in leopards the black coat comes from a recessive version of the gene ASIP.
Black jaguars are more common in forests. Geneticists at Panthera say that in the wild, black jaguars and black leopards each make up around 10 percent.
The oldest known American fossil assigned to the jaguar's family line is from Hamilton Cave in West Virginia, and it dates to about 850 to 820 thousand years ago.
In 2016 researchers used GPS collars on 44 jaguars, which were tracked between 1998 and 2016 across five habitats in Brazil and Argentina, and it was the largest collection of jaguar movement data analyzed to that date. Of the 44 jaguars, 33 (80 percent) stayed inside one range.
Males had larger home ranges and tended to travel farther each day, and the GPS-collar study found the biggest home ranges in the Atlantic Forest, a habitat with much deforestation and many people. One study put jaguar home ranges at about 25 to 38 square km for females and up to double that for males. The average daily travel in that study was 3.3 km for males and 1.8 km for females. Jaguars are solitary and territorial, but the territories of males and females can overlap.
Jaguars hunt on the ground, and they sometimes climb a tree to hunt. A jaguar hunts by sneaking close and then pouncing, and it does most of its hunting at night.
Jaguars are built for power, not speed, and when a jaguar charges at its fastest, the charge lasts only 7 to 30 meters, and the cat tires quickly. Jaguars prefer to wait in ambush rather than chase.
Jaguars eat many kinds of animals, such as deer, peccaries and capybaras, and they have eaten more than 85 kinds of animals. Jaguars prefer medium-to-large prey but can adapt to the animals that live in each habitat, and they are a keystone species, which means they help keep the number of other animals in balance.
Jaguars usually live near water, such as rivers, swamps and lagoons, and they are strong swimmers with large, rounded paws that help them swim. When forests flood, jaguars swim from place to place. One fact sheet says that when jaguars swim they rarely cover more than half a kilometer (0.3 mile) at a time, holding the head and spine out of the water.
Words to know
- genome: set of genes
- dominant: one copy enough
- recessive: needs two copies
- hybridization: mixing species
- Panthera: big-cat group
- gene: trait instruction
