A jaguar's coat is usually pale yellow, tan or reddish yellow, with black rosettes, which are dark spots. The spotted coat helps a jaguar hide in forests and grasslands. The rosettes of a jaguar often have a spot inside, and the rosettes of a leopard do not.
Some jaguars are black, and they are called melanistic jaguars. "Black panther" is a name for black leopards and black jaguars, and it is not a separate kind of cat.
A jaguar is more heavily built than a leopard, with a stockier body. Compared with a leopard, a jaguar has a deeper chest, a broader head and larger paws, and its tail is shorter.
Adult jaguars weigh between 80 and 348 pounds (36 to 158 kg), though the ends of that range are exceptional. Measured from the nose to the tip of the tail, an adult jaguar is 5 to 8 feet (1.5 to 2.4 meters) long. The jaguar is the third-largest cat in the world; only lions and tigers are bigger.
Size changes from place to place. The largest jaguars live in the Brazilian Pantanal, where males average 100 kg and females 76 kg. Male jaguars are usually 10 to 20 percent larger than females.
Jaguars are built for power, not speed, and they can run briefly. A jaguar hunts by sneaking close and then pouncing, and it does most of its hunting at night. Jaguars hunt on the ground, and they sometimes climb a tree to hunt.
Jaguars eat many kinds of animals, such as deer, peccaries and capybaras, and they have eaten more than 85 kinds of animals.
Leopards live in Africa and Asia, and jaguars live in the Americas. Jaguars live in Central and South America, in places such as the Amazon, in tropical rainforests and also in swamps, grasslands and dry places. The jaguar is the largest cat in the Americas, and it is the only big cat that lives there.
Jaguars usually live near water, such as rivers, swamps and lagoons. They are strong swimmers, and they have large, rounded paws that help them swim. When forests flood, jaguars swim from place to place.
Words to know
- rosettes: dark coat spots
- stockier: thicker, sturdier
- melanistic: black-coated
