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Modern Weights and Measurements of Jaguars

Canada Balam Offline
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(04-07-2020, 09:21 PM)peter Wrote: DARK JAGUAR

Interesting contributions from start to finish. Many thanks on behalf of all! You almost singlehandedly revived the thread.

It's remarkable that the difference in size between regions is so pronounced in jaguars. Pantanal jaguars more or less compare to Sumatran tigers, whereas those in Belize are smaller than leopards of large subspecies.

There was quite a bit of information about Surinam jaguars in the former Zoological Museum of Amsterdam (ZMA). The collection of the ZMA was moved to the natural history museum of Leiden (Naturalis) some years ago. About 15 years ago, I measured a lot of skulls in the former ZMA. I also found relaible information about the length and weight of a number of jaguars. Based on what I have, I'd say there's, sizewise, little to choose between Surinam and Belize.

There are some Mesoamerican jaguars that have reached weights of over 90 kg registered which is at par with the largest leopards. On average Iranian leopards weight 62 kg which isn't too far away from the 57 kg for Belize jaguars. We don't have much data on rainforests leopards to make an assessment, but from what I've seen their weights seem to overlap with Mesoamerican jaguars as well.


*This image is copyright of its original author
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United States Pckts Offline
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( This post was last modified: 04-08-2020, 03:13 AM by Pckts )

(04-08-2020, 02:09 AM)OncaAtrox Wrote:
(04-07-2020, 09:21 PM)peter Wrote: DARK JAGUAR

Interesting contributions from start to finish. Many thanks on behalf of all! You almost singlehandedly revived the thread.

It's remarkable that the difference in size between regions is so pronounced in jaguars. Pantanal jaguars more or less compare to Sumatran tigers, whereas those in Belize are smaller than leopards of large subspecies.

There was quite a bit of information about Surinam jaguars in the former Zoological Museum of Amsterdam (ZMA). The collection of the ZMA was moved to the natural history museum of Leiden (Naturalis) some years ago. About 15 years ago, I measured a lot of skulls in the former ZMA. I also found relaible information about the length and weight of a number of jaguars. Based on what I have, I'd say there's, sizewise, little to choose between Surinam and Belize.

There are some Mesoamerican jaguars that have reached weights of over 90 kg registered which is at par with the largest leopards. On average Iranian leopards weight 62 kg which isn't too far away from the 57 kg for Belize jaguars. We don't have much data on rainforests leopards to make an assessment, but from what I've seen their weights seem to overlap with Mesoamerican jaguars as well.


*This image is copyright of its original author

Largest Skull shown
10.3'' x 6.4'' Total Score 16.7''

For Comparison 

A skull of that size in Almeidas book would be on the bottom tier (2nd smallest recorded of all Jaguars,) one with almost identical measurements was hunted by Butch White
With a score of 9 4/16'' x 6.5'' Total Score of 16.3'' and a weight of 67kg
The next one up from that has a score of 17.01 and weight of 83kg
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peter Offline
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( This post was last modified: 04-08-2020, 04:12 PM by peter )

(04-08-2020, 02:09 AM)OncaAtrox Wrote:
(04-07-2020, 09:21 PM)peter Wrote: DARK JAGUAR

Interesting contributions from start to finish. Many thanks on behalf of all! You almost singlehandedly revived the thread.

It's remarkable that the difference in size between regions is so pronounced in jaguars. Pantanal jaguars more or less compare to Sumatran tigers, whereas those in Belize are smaller than leopards of large subspecies.

There was quite a bit of information about Surinam jaguars in the former Zoological Museum of Amsterdam (ZMA). The collection of the ZMA was moved to the natural history museum of Leiden (Naturalis) some years ago. About 15 years ago, I measured a lot of skulls in the former ZMA. I also found relaible information about the length and weight of a number of jaguars. Based on what I have, I'd say there's, sizewise, little to choose between Surinam and Belize.

There are some Mesoamerican jaguars that have reached weights of over 90 kg registered which is at par with the largest leopards. On average Iranian leopards weight 62 kg which isn't too far away from the 57 kg for Belize jaguars. We don't have much data on rainforests leopards to make an assessment, but from what I've seen their weights seem to overlap with Mesoamerican jaguars as well.


*This image is copyright of its original author

I know some male jaguars in that region can reach the weight of the heaviest leopards, but I was referring to the average of male jaguars in Belize on one hand (a) and male leopards in Natal on the other (b):


*This image is copyright of its original author


The table says young adult male leopards (4-6 years of age) in Natal average just over 66 kg., whereas mature males (7 years of age and older) average 72,25 kg. (about 160 pounds). Natal male leopards, as far as I know, seem to be the heaviest at the level of subspecies. The heaviest male (79 kg.), by the way, was a young adult.

Rainforest leopards are an enigma. I only saw 2 skulls from western central Africa in natural history museums, but they were longer and more robust than the others. Skulls of rainforest leopards have a somewhat flatter profile. The dentition seems to be heavier than in other subspecies.

Leopards in central parts of Africa, and those shot in elevated regions in Kenia in particular, seem to compare to Natal leopards. At the level of subspecies, they could be as large or a bit larger. I recently saw a few photographs of large skulls from Kenia. I'll post the details when I have more information.
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Guatemala GuateGojira Offline
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(04-08-2020, 02:09 AM)OncaAtrox Wrote: There are some Mesoamerican jaguars that have reached weights of over 90 kg registered which is at par with the largest leopards.

Can you please show me those weights of over 90 kg? The only weights that I have from Mesoamerica are those from Belize and none surpased the 70 kg. As far I know, no other jaguars hed been weighed in this region (Chiapas-Yucatan, Guatemala and Honduras [sadly, extinct in El Salvador]).
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Guatemala GuateGojira Offline
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@Dark Jaguar and @Pckts, you made an excelent work in creating this huge database of modern records of weights and a couple of measurements from jaguars in the Pantanal (and other Brazilian regions) in modern times.

I think is time to start gathering all this information and I will like to ask you if you can make a table with these records. Believe me, I will love to do it, but time is short for me now.

You can use a simple Excel ® table and start adding the information, you can use this form if you want it:

** No. of specimen -- Popular name -- Weight (kg) -- Capture date -- Source -- Remarks **

This is just a suggestion, you can use other type of columns in Excel.

Tell me, what do you think? Do you accept the mission? Wink
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Brazil Dark Jaguar Offline
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( This post was last modified: 04-08-2020, 04:36 AM by Dark Jaguar )

PETER

Thank you so much Peter I truly appreciate it. Its a pleasure to contribute to Wildfacts

About pantanal male jaguars overlapping with sumatran tigers, I'd say 15 years ago it would be much less often to see it for obvious reasons but pantanal jags with good prey base like today ( northern pantanal is a good example ) can overlap with sumatran tigers more often than before. Both south and north pantanal male jags today regarding size wise are living their best moments since many many decades ago.
 
About surinam jags If you manage to get the information on them, dont forget to share with us  Lol   We all would appreciate it. I heard a few years ago their body parts have been sought after and traded overseas.  Sad

Regarding the skulls, Leandro Silveira President of Jaguar Conservation Fund (IOP) from Cerrado has many jaguars skulls and skins ( all killed by poachers unfortunately ) in his project including pantanal jags, cerrado jags, caatinga jags... Leandro is a true jaguar specialist and he knows how the whole dynamic in its sorrounding works not only in cerrado but in the whole Brazil not to mention about the other animals. He has some good jags skulls here in Brazil.


This was when Richard Rasmussen (famous brazilian biologist) visited IOP in Cerrado.

Check the skulls and skins at 20:40 min. 






Pckts

 Absolutely, Crawshaw is the man one sits down and learn with. just imagine how many awesome stories/facts he got.

Despite not being fan of estimations Crawshaw would be the guy I'd ask on the weight estimation of the most impressive southern pantanal male jaguar I've seen so far, Colombiano male, He was never weighed as far as I am concerned and the way he dwarfs other males is ridiculous.



GuateGojira

Thank you very much, That's a great idea count me in Like   I am sure the results on that table will be marvelous.


Soon there'll be some good stuff coming, I'm gonna be posting a few tables of some brazilian jags captured from 2000 to 2009 including a few Amazon, Cerrado and more than 30 Pantanal jags in addition to another content on the average size of the Cerrado male jaguar and his measurements in details and even comparison to a cerrado Puma. I just need to finish the translations into english. I'll post it soon, stay tuned you all.
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Canada Balam Offline
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( This post was last modified: 04-08-2020, 04:45 AM by Balam )

(04-08-2020, 03:47 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:
(04-08-2020, 02:09 AM)OncaAtrox Wrote: There are some Mesoamerican jaguars that have reached weights of over 90 kg registered which is at par with the largest leopards.

Can you please show me those weights of over 90 kg? The only weights that I have from Mesoamerica are those from Belize and none surpased the 70 kg. As far I know, no other jaguars hed been weighed in this region (Chiapas-Yucatan, Guatemala and Honduras [sadly, extinct in El Salvador]).

Some males have been registered to wander in the 80 kg range in Central America

*This image is copyright of its original author


And this is the information I have for jaguars that surpass the 90 kg threshold in Mexico, those measurements are different nowadays that jaguars have had such a fragmented habitat with less prey and hunting pressure.

*This image is copyright of its original author

https://www.fws.gov/southwest/es/arizona/Documents/SpeciesDocs/Jaguar/049777%20-%20Jaguar%20Recovery%20Outline.pdf
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Canada Balam Offline
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This was another estimation based for Mesoamerican jaguars in the Southern United States, although the methods for reaching that estimation are unclear


*This image is copyright of its original author

https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/99/3/724/4956954
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TheNormalGuy Offline
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(04-08-2020, 03:58 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: @Dark Jaguar and @Pckts, you made an excelent work in creating this huge database of modern records of weights and a couple of measurements from jaguars in the Pantanal (and other Brazilian regions) in modern times.

I think is time to start gathering all this information and I will like to ask you if you can make a table with these records. Believe me, I will love to do it, but time is short for me now.

You can use a simple Excel ® table and start adding the information, you can use this form if you want it:

** No. of specimen -- Popular name -- Weight (kg) -- Capture date -- Source -- Remarks **

This is just a suggestion, you can use other type of columns in Excel.

Tell me, what do you think? Do you accept the mission? Wink

What do you mean : “time is short for me now” ?

Are you alright ?

Is this health related ? [i hope not]
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Guatemala GuateGojira Offline
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(04-08-2020, 04:44 AM)OncaAtrox Wrote: Some males have been registered to wander in the 80 kg range in Central America

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

And this is the information I have for jaguars that surpass the 90 kg threshold in Mexico, those measurements are different nowadays that jaguars have had such a fragmented habitat with fee prey and hunting pressure.

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author
https://www.fws.gov/southwest/es/arizona/Documents/SpeciesDocs/Jaguar/049777%20-%20Jaguar%20Recovery%20Outline.pdf

Been honest, none of those weights are from Mesoamerica, in the strict sence of the word. In fact, while some maps shows to you that Mesoamerica starts in the middle of Mexico and others even up to the Eastern Sierra Madre, other shows only the region of the Mayas, which is the Mexican states of Chiapas and Yucatan, and the countries of Guatemala, Belize, and the northern part of Honduras and El Salvador; the last one is the region normally used in our contries. Even if we take the "larger" region (the map that I put here), the Sinaloa state is still out of that area (the second map, region is red):

*This image is copyright of its original author


*This image is copyright of its original author


So, the information that you posted is very good, and I will save it (thanks for that), but certainly those from "Mexico" are probably closer to the population of the northern region of Mexico and Texas/Arizona than to the Mesoamerica one, the image even say that they are from Sinaloa.

The record from Nicaragua (also not Mesoamerica) is very insteresting, as with 81.2 kg, it is the heaviest jaguar recorded in Central America (from Guatemala to Panama), and as heavy as the biggest pumas in Canada/Chile.

About Leopold, this is the original source, and been honest he doesn't state that the measurements are from Mexico per se, and they look more like those from South America if you compare it with other regions:

*This image is copyright of its original author


About this phrase in the pdf: "In Central America and southern Mexico, both sexes trend slightly larger than they do to the north or south". Certainly they did not read the documents, if not they will see that is the contrary, northern and southern jaguars are relative bigger than those from southern Mexico and Central America.
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Guatemala GuateGojira Offline
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(04-08-2020, 05:07 AM)TheNormalGuy Wrote: What do you mean : “time is short for me now” ?

Are you alright ?

Is this health related ? [i hope not]

No, don't worry. What I mean is that I am still working, but from my home. As many posters know, my job takes a lot of time and that is why I can't post as much as I would like.

So don't worry. Happy
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Guatemala GuateGojira Offline
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( This post was last modified: 04-08-2020, 05:37 AM by GuateGojira )

(04-08-2020, 04:51 AM)OncaAtrox Wrote: This was another estimation based for Mesoamerican jaguars in the Southern United States, although the methods for reaching that estimation are unclear


*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author
https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/99/3/724/4956954

The record in the image is not from Mesoamerica neather, is from New Mexico, so is related with the northern jaguar population (north Mexico, Texas and Arizona).

The document in PDF is from Brazil, out of question. Even then, good information.
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Canada Balam Offline
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(04-08-2020, 05:35 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:
(04-08-2020, 04:51 AM)OncaAtrox Wrote: This was another estimation based for Mesoamerican jaguars in the Southern United States, although the methods for reaching that estimation are unclear


*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author
https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/99/3/724/4956954

The record in the image is not from Mesoamerica neather, is from New Mexico, so is related with the northern jaguar population (north Mexico, Texas and Arizona).

The document in PDF is from Brazil, out of question. Even then, good information.
Thanks for the clarification regarding the geography of Mesoamerica, I'm actually originally from South America myself so we tend to confuse all the regional names at times. I was treating the jaguars from Central America, and southern North America as one group under the 'Mesoamerican' category.
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Guatemala GuateGojira Offline
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( This post was last modified: 04-08-2020, 06:06 AM by GuateGojira )

(04-08-2020, 05:49 AM)OncaAtrox Wrote: Thanks for the clarification regarding the geography of Mesoamerica, I'm actually originally from South America myself so we tend to confuse all the regional names at times. I was treating the jaguars from Central America, and southern North America as one group under the 'Mesoamerican' category.

Don't worry my friend, that is why we are here, to learn more every day.

Based in these figures, I think that we can separate three main groups, that are not subspecies of course:

1 - Northern group: USA and northern Mexico.
2 - Central group: Southern Mexico and Central America (Guatemala to Panama).
3 - Southern group: All South America, with many single populations.

This is just an easy separation for comparison porpuses, but South America had several diferent populations, like that of the Llanos in Venezuela, those from Peru and Bolivia, the giants of el Pantanal in Brazil, the one of the Amazonas and the almoust unknown at the north of Argentina, among many others.

It is incredible that jaguars do not have subspecies and only several populations with clinal diferences.
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Canada Balam Offline
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(04-08-2020, 06:05 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:
(04-08-2020, 05:49 AM)OncaAtrox Wrote: Thanks for the clarification regarding the geography of Mesoamerica, I'm actually originally from South America myself so we tend to confuse all the regional names at times. I was treating the jaguars from Central America, and southern North America as one group under the 'Mesoamerican' category.

Don't worry my friend, that is why we are here, to learn more every day.

Based in these figures, I think that we can separate three main groups, that are not subspecies of course:

1 - Northern group: USA and northern Mexico.
2 - Central group: Southern Mexico and Central America (Guatemala to Panama).
3 - Southern group: All South America, with many single populations.

This is just an easy separation for comparison porpuses, but South America had several diferent populations, like that of the Llanos in Venezuela, those from Peru and Bolivia, the giants of el Pantanal in Brazil, the one of the Amazonas and the almoust unknown at the north of Argentina, among many others.

It is incredible that jaguars do not have subspecies and only several populations with clinal diferences.
I'm particularly interested in seeing a study on the weighs and measurements of Llanos Colombian jaguars and Atlantic forest jaguars, particularly of the Argentinian side. We have no data on Colombian jaguars from Llanos besides recent trackings by camera trapping footage, while the Atlantic forests jaguars have limited data on sizes though better than the Colombian ones. I feel like we would be quite surprised if we were to see how big the Colombianos Llanos jaguars can get as the males there look just impressive as Pantanal ones. 

One of the few records I know of Colombian jaguars is this old newspaper article which I posted on a different forum regarding a cattle eating jaguar that weighted 12 arrobas or 136+kg and measured almost 3 meters

*This image is copyright of its original author

Source; https://twitter.com/colombia_hist/status/1208363235306622976

I'm not sure about which kind of measurement styles they used for the jaguar since we are not dealing with scientists here, but nonetheless that is a huge cat.
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