Modern Weights and Measurements of Jaguars

[Balam]

@peter thanks for the explanation! @Dark Jaguar had recently posted on the size comparisons thread the pug mark of a jaguar that measured 14 cm in total, although now by reading your explanation I can see that taking the heel width is the best and most accurate way to gage overall size. Maybe Dark can repost that picture here for is to analyze the heel width.

With that in mind, my guess is that a jaguar with complete paw width of 10 cm would probably yield a heel width of around 8 cm, which still somewhat compares to that of a tigress. Now, I recall reading that proportionally jaguars have the widest paws on the Pantherines, so using the paw widths to compare with those of tigers might end up providing inaccurate results as the latter can still grow bigger with a proportionally thinner paw (I will investigate this further and maybe locate the study I read this from, it was a while ago).

The past paragraph does leads me to believe that similar to skull length, paw size might not be the best indicator go use when comparing the sizes of two animals. A clear example of this are the longer skulls we see on lions, that sometimes both proportionally and totally end being longer than those than tigers, even if the tiger is the heavier animal. Nonetheless having this data from Chaco jaguars gives an inside on them, hopefully we can continue getting more in the upcoming months. Reply