Comparing big cats - differences/changes with time

[BlakeW39]

@Pckts ,

I didn't catch the study you quotes haha.

Well, the study we've both reviewed takes into consideration over 3,000 jaguar kills; of this >3,000, it is found that all species of tapir were significantly avoided, with lowland tapir being very rarely predated on and the baird's tapid not being hunted one single time (out of 3,000). Tapirs are difficult prey -- they are very strong and robust animals -- but are they this difficult? I'd think not, as tigers for instance are able to reliably take on prey up to 4-5x their body mass, whereas a female tapir is only 1.3x the size of a jaguar. It's very clear to me that jaguars not predating on tapirs is not an issue of abundance, as they overlap in a number of spots all across the respective ranges of both animals, but rather it is very clear that tapirs are avoided prey.

We must remember that the jaguar was not always an apex carnivore, but in the Pleistocene likely often was a mesocarnivore. This could explain their diet, as them being more akin to a leopard or puma in many cases than to a tiger.

Jaguars, as we have established, have unusually diverse and generalized diets compared to the other big cats. Jaguars in the past likely would have taken larger prey, but they weren't dependent upon it -- if they were, they would not have survived. It's apparent that the other big cats of the Pleistocene Americas (aside from the puma) were dependent on larger prey, and as their prey died out, so did they. Jaguars were able to adapt to the Holocene because they didn't rely so much on the prey that was lost. I don't think it's at all misleading to say this.

Also, while livestock are large, they lack defenaive capabilities similar to their wild counterparts, not even just physically, but that they lack the appropriate response to predators which a wild prey animal would have. Reply