Personal Opinion & Speculations

[Sully]

Whenever I have thought of this question in the past my answer has always been the jaguar. Simply the sheer build of the animal with a powerful structure, strong forelimbs, a bone crushing bite, these cats are able to take out caiman which is no easy feat. However my one qualm with jaguars which is of course down to no fault of their own is prey size/difficulty. I have never heard a case of jaguar predation which has really wowed me in terms of difficulty of the kill. Now we can all theorise whether one would be able to take out a zebra for example but nothing concrete will come from it and there are too many variables (ambush style, surrounding vegetation, ect) to simply put it down to the size of the animal. Now following the same line of thought cats such as the leopard and tiger do have cases of predation that wow me, we all know some of the astonishing hunting feats leopards have achieved from eland all the way to gorilla, and the way they hoist kills into trees is beyond insane. However more recent cases of tigers killing juvenile and adult rhinos for me is the most impressive if we're thinking size ratio wise and difficulty of the kill/aggressiveness of the prey item. A cat that can overpower a rhino is pound for pound probably the strongest. I think it's hard to add lions to this comparison given their hunting accomplishments are usually done in a group, so for me they are exempt even though the figurehead is usually the male.

Great thread btw! Interested to see others' input. Reply