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Balam · 04-07-2021, 05:13 AM

(04-07-2021, 04:03 AM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: @peter @Balam @Pckts and other members.

INTRAESPECIFIC MORTALITY CASE OF JAGUARS.

Last night there was an amazing live of Onçafari with 2 great and humble onçafari's biologists Diogo Lucatelli and Lilian Ramplim which both answered my questions.

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Unfortunately when I arrived it was nearly the end but I was able to catch some nice information on jaguars interactions and behavior.

My first question was about something that is in my mind for years, the mysterious case about the death of Garoa female (daughter of Chuva female) as I already knew she died on a brutal conflict with other jaguars but with no many details.

Through the live the Presenter woman (in Blue shirt) asked my question to Lilian who had already noticed my question as I dropped it, she responded and found it interesting such a detailed question and she said not many people there make questions pointing out Jaguars names and certain rare cases of many years ago.

About the case she said it was in around 2014-2016, Garoa was feeding on a carcass and then 2 jaguars showed up and messed with Garoa who was all by herself on the carcass, Lilian pointed out that the 2 individuals happened to be Sombra male and Esperança female, they engaged on a brutal fight which resulted on the death of Garoa, so answering my question Sombra and Esperança killed Garoa, her dead body was found by the team with multiples scratches marks over her body, canine marks over the trachea and they collected her body and Garoa's skull is being used for environmental education for children and they're always mentioning Garoa and her skull to the students.

Now that I know the full story I am really intrigued, Garoa went through alot in her short life and she did not deserve what happened to her, as a cub she was many times left alone while her mother Chuva was mating with either Brazuka or Fantasma males and Garoa (still a cub) was nowhere to be seen, even Onçafari was worried and mentioned she was missing for far too long and its not safe for a cub of Garoa's age to be on a vunerable situation like that as male jaguars can kill cubs. Garoa didn't have any cubs and the only male I've seen her with as an adult was the mighty Xavier, she could've been seen with other males but only Lilian, Diogo or the project's president Mario Haberfeld can tell. Lastly she wasn't killed via skull bite as neither Lilian nor Onçafari's page didn't mention anything on this regard nor did they mentioned any sort of damage on her skull and from what's been said the results of their examination on the corpse showed injures ''only'' all over her body. These jaguars dynamics are crazy as nature takes its course.

Garoa's death case described in onçafari's english page in the link bellow.

https://oncafari.org/en/animal/garoa-en/

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Garoa's skull

photo: Victor Moriyama

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For those who don't know who are the individuals involved.

Garoa female ( 83 kg )

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Garoa's Pugmarks

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Young Garoa's first capture in 2013, Back then she was with an estimated age of 15 months, she weighed 61 kg and looked very healthy.

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Here are the Culprits of Garoa's death.

Esperança female ( 81.8 kg )

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Sombra male ( 124 kg )

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Here you can see a sighting of both Sombra and Esperança together.

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Jaguar compared to Leopards.

Yes, someone made this question and Lilian was very direct on saying they are more different to each other than many people think she said they are veeery distant relatives, jaguars are much larger than leopards with the latter having to be lighter for an arboreal life and in addition to that they need long tails for mobility on climbing trees fast, so leopards are built on a size level of the pumas found in pantanal who are quite thin.

then Lilian pass the answer for Diogo who's been to Africa and he had seen leopards, lions, hyenas... Diogo adds the different status both cats got with leopards in Africa having big competition and having to worried about lions and hyenas to not take away its kill whereas jaguars in America are on top being registered spending a long time about 5 km away from its carcass before getting back to it.

Lilian also mentioned about the fact they thought Nusa was not best suited female jaguar for being a mother as she took a while to be one but Nusa surprised them all as she hid her cub from everyone for 5 months.

Fight of Puma vs Jaguar

someone asked if they've ever seen a fight between puma and jaguar and both biologists said no, Lilian said the Puma will avoid the jaguar as its much smaller, however Diogo mentioned one of his collegues from North Pantanal have registered a fight in Porto Jofre between Puma and Jaguar but by the moment he was gonna continue the presenter kinda derailed the topic a little bit and the conversation kinda turned into a slightly other direction unfortunately.

We know there are Pumas in Porto Jofre as its mentioned and shown via camera traps on my post #296 so a fight between the two sounds interesting in those areas.

Teorema vs Puma and Fantasma

The live was coming to an end and my last question was being ignored by the presenter woman 4 times already and at the very end when the presenter woman was about to read the last question (which obviously wasn't mine repeated for the 5th time) Lilian kinda interupted the presenter woman before she reads someone else's question and Lilian went straight to my message saying its a very interesting one and read it out loud real fast to give time enough to answer it haha The presenter woman went mute lol.

My question was if theres another similar record to Garoa's case or a fight to the death between jaguars that took place at Fazenda Caiman.

She said no, Garoa was the only case on this regard they saw occuring there so far but she mentioned Troncha's death as she believes it was by natural causes due to old age, Troncha was already an extremely old female and all sights of old age were noticed when they found her dead body and by the position of it.

Troncha female's bones.

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Then Lilian passed the answer for Diogo to finally confirm it and she asked him if he recalls anything related to Garoa's case, that was when things got really exciting.

Diogo said no, a case similar to Garoa's could've happened elsewhere but he remembers when there was a Puma feeding on a carcass and not too far there was a large female jaguar named Teorema also feeding on the carcass, all of a sudden Teorema started to growl and esturrou (vocalized) loudly to the Puma who moved out but on the other hand that sound Teorema made drew the attention of another jaguar that was passing by not too far from there, as Diogo mentioned suddently a male jaguar came out of nowhere running real fast towards the carcass of Teorema, the male was Fantasma and he had a tough fight against Teorema over the carcass and he got beat up real badly by Teorema and then he left, it surprised everyone, in addition to Diogo's sighting statement Lilian mentioned she recalls Fantasma leaving that place with ugly wound over his face, she said Teorema lacerated his face and chased him away.

Really cool to hear Fantasma's interactions from Diogo Lucatelli though as despite of him being a biologist he is also instructor for almost 9 years at Onçafari, he trains the new members to become successful guides, preparing them to lead safaris, telling them about the importance of the radio collar, and much more. Diogo saw Fantasma male so many times back in the days in 2012 and 2013 which was the last year Fantasma was seen by Onçafari team. I'd like to hear more of Fantasma from Diogo as well as the Puma vs Jaguar conflict in Porto Jofre.

And finally about Teorema..... what a beast, afterall she was a tank of a female. She weighed 95 kg. She is the mother of Nusa female and Pitágoras male.

Teorema beating him and driving him away from her carcass after a moment of the old male coming running confidently towards her to take over the carcass is really impressive, it just shows that a threatened female jaguar's power cannot be underestimated and even though Fantasma might have lost interest we can't take away Teorema's impressive ferociousness to defend her kill in the tough fight as both biologists described. Maybe the old male wasn't going all out but Whatever reason Fantasma decided to retreat it was a consequence of Teorema's attitude, and what an attitude. Lastly I hope the Puma as it left it managed to drag its carcass away before this whole conflict started.

Puma with carcass at Fazenda Caiman.

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Fantasma male

credits: Diogo Lucatelli

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95 kg Teorema female

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She's a beast

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95 kg Teorema when captured in 2013

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Teorema arriving at her calf carcass and taking it back from Garoa female which was feeding on it while Teorema was away on another case, then Garoa took down a big female Pecari about 100 meters away from Teorema who kept feeding on the calf.

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Teorema

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I am glad to finally know what really happened to Garoa's death, Sombra and Esperança killing her was insane and intriguing.

There is just so much to unpack here I don't know where to being.

First, I completely agree with you on your description of the Oncafari team as humble, they truly are open to the people and get very excited when enthusiasts like us mention the jaguars by name and show us the knowledge we have of them. They've told me that before several times.

Then it's the Garoa situation, there's still SO much to dive into when it comes to jaguar ecology that people simply are clueless about. After lions, jaguars are undoubtedly the most social pantherine. @epaiva mentioned some time ago about a coalition of males that ruled over Hato Piñero in Venezuela and would team up to defeat adversaries and retain control of their territory. We also know of Katu and Iko's coalition which lasted years despite them not being related by blood.

In the case of Hope and Sombra, my guess is that they were frequent mates, and that meant that they would unify forces to establish dominance. What sucks is that Garoa did not deserve to go through that. Jaguars are so smart and they show such a complex social system that we can see through tracking them how their personalities are and how hard some of them happen to have it in their lives. Garoa was in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

I don't know if Peter knows anything about tigers uniting forces to kill their adversaries, but this phenomenon seems to be so far unique between jaguars and lions among the pantherine felids.

The case of Teorema defeating Fantasma is also extremely interesting, it reminded me of Machili who also sent a few big male tigers limping the other way when she was defending herself or her territory, and we know for a fact that Fantasma was a huge jaguar which Londolozi trackers said to be the size of the tailless lioness, one of the largest lionesses seen at Sabi Sands. I don't have the exact minute with me but I recall there being small footage of Fantasma fighting a female in this documentary, it might've been Teorema:

This also puts in perspective the strength of female jaguars.

In regards to the interactions with cougars, we know for a fact that areas in the Pantanal that are high in jaguar concentration also have lower concentrations of mtn lions per km2. In Paul Denahe's latest book on the northern Pantanal it is also mentioned how cougar densities at Jofre are extremely low. This is also seen in Africa and Asia, areas that have a high number of tigers and lions will house smaller numbers of leopards. Apex carnivores will kill subordinate carnivores if they get the chance, so the former avoid high-risk areas where they may be prone to run into bigger and stronger competition.

Interestingly, Hato la Aurora seems to house really high densities of cougars as well as jaguars as dozens of cougars have been registered in the area according to Nelson Barragan. If this is true then it begs the question as to why they wouldn't avoid that particular jaguar-rich area as well, perhaps abundant prey and prey partitioning?

Edu recently told me that the Oncafari team has only been able to capture one cougar throughout the entire trapping campaigns, this is because their densities are once again really low in high-density jaguar areas. They captured one male who weighed 64 kg (significantly more than Almeida's heaviest of 58 kg), though he did mention he was skeptical of that weight as it was gathered with a mechanical and not a digital scale. It's his opinion that Atlantic Forest cougars may be larger than Pantanal ones as in order to avoid clashes with jaguars cougars in the Pantanal will hunt the smaller prey such as armadillos and coatis, to leave the bigger game to jaguars. That being said, I'm bringing back this size comparison between a very large male cougar and a female I have not been able to ID from Caiman where it can be noted that the tom cougar actually had a larger frame and was taller at the shoulders. If you can help me ID her then we can look up her weight as she was collared and then maybe give an estimation on the cougar's size:

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In regards to the leopard question, I just love how actual biologists don't have the patience or time to go around in circles with this comparison like fanboys on other platforms do. The facts are simple, jaguars and leopards are very different from each other both in their morphology and ecology. They have different behavioral patterns and the size discrepancy between the two is very well defined and marked. Not the same thing at all.

Lastly, let's try to see if we can get our hands on Troncha's skull measurements, we can then compare her to Almeida's record female as I'm sure she would've been bigger. @Pckts maybe you can ask Edu and see if he has that info?

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