The Llanos Jaguar

[Balam]

The Llanos (Orinoco plains)

Wide grasslands stretching across northern South America and occupying western Venezuela and northeastern Colombia. The Llanos have an area of approximately 220,000 square miles (570,000 square km), delimited by the Andes Mountains to the north and west, the Guaviare River and the Amazon River basin to the south, and the lower Orinoco River and the Guiana Highlands to the east. Britannica Encyclopedia.

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Landscape and Fauna:

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Neil Palmer

Tuparro National Park, Colombia

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Carolina H

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Rodrigo Gaviria

Hato El Cedral, Venezuela

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barloventomagico

Hato la Aurora, Colombia

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Alejandro Calderón

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Alfonso Giraldo

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Characteristics of the Llanos jaguar:

Excerpt from BODY MASS AND SKULL MEASUREMENTS IN FOUR JAGUAR POPULATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THEIR PREY BASE
by Rafael Hoogesteijn and Edgardo Mondolfi

The third sample consists of jaguars from the Llanos or floodplains of Venezuela (Hoogesteijn and Mondolfi 1993b, this study). The Llanos of Venezuela is a large, low lying savanna region that comprises much of the northern and western regions of the Orinoco River drainage basin in Venezuela and Colombia (Thorbjarnarson 1991). The jaguar population inhabiting this region is currently included in the same subspecies as the Amazon jaguar (P. onca onca).

The sex difference for the Llanos is 56%. Also the differences for skull measurements between males and females were greater for the Llanos (between 17 and 19%) compared with the other groups, where differences oscillated between 10% and 13%. There is apparently a higher degree of sexual dimorphism in the Llanos population than elsewhere.

A sample of six stomach contents from the Llanos of Venezuela gave an estimated MWVP of 98 kg, including domestic stock (Mondolfi and Hoogesteijn 1986). A larger sample (18 stomach contents) from the same area gave an MWVP value of 50 kg, where cattle remains occurred in 56 percent ofthe sample (Hoogesteijn and Mondolfi 1993a, b).

Today, the largest jaguars persist in the Pantanal of Mato Grosso (P. onca paraguensis) and the Llanos of Venezuela (P. onca onca), both foodplain areas (the Llanos nearer to the Equator) that are widely, separated but possess some similar ecological features. Both are flooded 5 -6 months of the year, covered in part with extensive gallery and semideciduous forests and have to a certain extent a similar preybase (Schaller and Crawshaw 1980; Crawshaw and Quigley 1991; Hoogesteijn and Mondolfi 1993a). 

Some questions arise regarding the size reduction that this felid underwent from the Pleistocene to the present and the actual large sizes of individuals from the two floodplain populations. These larger jaguars could represent descendants that maintained their larger size due to the better feeding conditions in the floodplain. On the other hand, local populations could have become bigger from the year 1,600 A.D. onwards, with the introduction of plentiful and vulnerable prey such as feral cattle, calves and horse foals. These prey constitute a sizable part of their diet; cattle constituted 38,48 and 56% of stomach contents or kills in three studies, two in the Pantanal and one in the Llanos (Hoogesteijn and Mondolfi 1993b). These changes in size show the great adaptability of this efficient predator of the neotropical forest vertebrates. 

Most current studies relate jaguars to forested areas, but at the beginning of this century, with less human encroachment, jaguars still lived in open areas, like the Argentinean Pampas, where they sought cover in the high grass patches near lagoons and streams, areas practically devoid of forests (Canevari 1983). Also, jaguars lived in the lower Llanos areas where only small strips of gallery forests at the edge of rivers and temporary streams existed between enormous savanna expanses (Hoogesteijn and Mondolfi 1993b). In both places, due to the lack of extensive cover, they were easily exterminated.

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Male from Venezuela

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Roger Manrique

Colombian males from Hato La Aurora, where the largest and most intense jaguar tracking and studying is taking place in the region

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Female from the Tuparro National Park

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