Comparing big cats - differences/changes with time

[Pckts]

@BlakeW39
There's an older study on Jaguars prey preference from the Southern Pantanal.
In this study its shown that Jaguars 1st preferred prey was cattle, then caiman and peccary.
This was dependent on the time of year and individual cat as certain individuals preferred cattle over another.
Cattle between calf and adult were both taken, showing that Jaguars take animals larger than Tapir often.
It's also shown that while both Collared and White lipped peccary were present, Jaguars preferred the white lip peccary which is a larger species.
Tapir were also taken but only by male Jaguars.
But there are a few factors that differentiate the South from the North.
In the South, floods are worse and cattle are preyed upon more often. The Tourism there is also more rugged and the lands more molested. Farmers will bait their properties with cattle to attract Jaguars and the tourists dollars that follow them.
Caiman is also less dense there, capybara as well. But in that study they found that when the water dispersed and the Caiman spread out across the landscape, Jaguars preferred Caiman to Cattle.
But in the North, Cattle isn't a preferred prey due to the abundance of Caiman and Capybara.

Now who's to say that Tapir wouldn't be preyed upon more often if Cattle weren't so available. Cattle directly compete with Tapir for habitat and essentially replace that prey item for Jaguar with even less natural caution towards Jaguars. If Tapir existed in the numbers that animals like Caiman, Capybara and Peccary do then I'm sure they would be as common a prey item as all the rest.

Here is a beautiful display of how profecient they are while hunting in the water. For me, this is a good example of where a Jaguars evolution may be heading. They'll still need limbs to drag prey to shore when available but they need to be maneuverable in water to capture prey. It seems to be equally as important to sneak up from behind the waters edge as it does to sneak in to shore from the water itself.

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