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Jaguar Predation
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Onçafari https://oncafari.org/2013/08/01/jaguars-fight-over-kill-portuguese/
Year: 2013 Written and photographed by Adam Bannister Pantanal jaguars fighting over carcass. A female jaguar killed a cattle. She dragged it into the bush to get it a little more hidden. But she didn't drag it enough into the woods and in a few hours hundreds of vultures were already delighting and relishing the carcass. A message had been blown up in the air that fresh meat was available. This female is known to us as Teorema. She is one of the jaguars studied and has a collar with VHF, GPS and satellite transmission, which allows us to know her territory besides several other information that will be important in the conservation of her species. These animals are very little known and these informations are essential. Following the VHF signal we realized that the Teorema was there. It got dark. We stayed in the car about 50 meters from the carcass and waited. It's a game of patience! Fifteen minutes later we heard a movement near the dead cattle. As we light up the carcass we saw a jaguar feeding on it. With one hand I light up the carcass and with the other I held the binoculars. That jaguar had no collar! I thought I was seeing it wrong and once again I looked with the binoculars. Again I saw that the jaguar that was feeding had no collar. I took the VHF receiver and pointed it at the carcass. It accused the Teorema's signal. I was very surprised! I took a good look at the jaguar's spots and rosettes and as if they were fingerprints I could find out that the feeding jaguar was Garoa female, Chuva's cub. young Garoa female starts feeding on cattle carcass.  *This image is copyright of its original author My heart was beating at thousand times an hour, two unrelated jaguars meters away from each other. Did Teorema know that another jaguar was feeding on her carcass? The answer came instantly. It was so fast that I didn't have time to get my camera. Teorema exploded from the woods towards Garoa. At an unbelievable speed! I heard more than I saw... growlings and roars... Garoa had no chance. She's much smaller and younger than her opponent. Her only option was to accept the defeat. She did it quickly. She turned her belly up with her back to the ground with her paws up and her chest exposed, she was submissive. Teorema was smoking through her mouth out of anger, with her canines showing and ready to attack. But felines usually avoid physical confrontation and a few growls and it was enough for Teorema to regain her carcass. She calmly turned and went to feed… But it didn't end there... A group of white-lipped peccaries curious about the commotion, came to investigate what was happening. Garoa calmly got up, cleaned up and she started to show interest in the white-lipped peccaries. She ran and hunted down a huge female white-lipped pecari 100 metres from where Teorema was feeding. The noise of that hunt was very impressive. But Teorema didn't even seem to hear it, she continued eating her carcass quietly. Here you can see Teorema a large female feeding.  *This image is copyright of its original author The next day, images from a photographic trap showed us that 2 hours later, Teorema walked away. Only 10min passed, Garoa appeared and also fed on the cattle carcass. For some reason she had left her pecari kill and came to feed on Teorema's carcass... It's Hard to explain. What a privilege to have witnessed this interaction between two wild females! Aggressive but at the same time tolerant to each other. We'll keep finding out more about the mysterious life of jaguars... BRIEF OFF TOPIC Note: There's a report of Onçafari from that same year 2013 in April when they caught Teorema to monitor her she weight 95 kilos and she showed physical signs of a possible pregnancy as you can see on her pic (swollen breasts and distended abdomen) Later her pregnancy was confirmed and ALSO later that year in October they caught another female named Troncha with incredible 110 kilos but she also showed signs of pregnancy (swollen breasts and distended abdomen). Onçafari didn't put her weight in their modern website ( only in their old yearly report which the pic of her lied down sedated on truck can't be copied   when she was most definitely pregnant. she had a cub named Mion in 2013 ) but they also say in their modern website Troncha is old now but she was always very strong and slender. So now we all can at least assume how big a pregnant pantanal jag might get.Let's also remember that Garoa the young female in this post is that same female that unfortunately had a very sad end, I posted her weight as an adult a few days ago in the thread https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-modern-weights-and-measurements-of-jaguars?page=8 |
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