Impressive Wild Jaguars - Pictures and Videos

[Balam]

(10-03-2020, 04:01 AM)KRA123 Wrote: I'm beginning to think that one thing about jaguars is that, partly because of their build, any jaguar will look impressive if an image of it is scaled up enough (lions may have the opposite problem). Looking back, I'm not surprised that Aju "only" came out to 110 kg since he looks to me to have a lighter frame than many large males; Gage was more of a surprise. Another problem though is that a jaguar may be in better condition in a photo than it was when it was actually weighed.  I mean look at how much MM males weight apparently fluctuated between captures, and (maybe I'm wrong) I don't even thin he's passed his prime yet; it seems like their weight isn't really stable, even ignoring the effects of gorging.

Weights are definitely never completely stable for any big cat, but your point of them being different in the build of pictures gathered compared to when they are actually captured holds validity. Aju was seen in person by Pckts and he said he was really big, so to his credit (Aju) he has a relatively large frame for his weight and while he is in his prime, he still may be able to put some 10-20 kg more as jaguars grown until they are 9 years of age.

Your point about camera pictures and how deceptive they are is the reason why I'm so skeptical when I see people jumping to conclusions about the size of a species, population, or individual without much solid previous data to back those claims up (I'm myself have been guilty of these with Atlantic forest jaguars). I'm certainly more cautious now about giving weight estimations based on pictures and rely more on the trackers and biologists that have access to these cats in real life to get a better opinion from them. So in that sense, I'm only taking into consideration the weight estimations for Balam, Edno, and Forasteiro that were provided to me by Ailton Lara, the Jaguar ID Project, as well as Caricare who was estimated 120+kg plus by the owner of the reserve he lives in. Reply