My most beautiful nature trip so far, into a unique and breathtaking animal world, was to the Pantanal 2018, every single animal encounter during these two weeks was impressive and exciting, especially the ones with the jaguars. On our 5 game drives on the Rio Cuiaba we actually discovered 5 different jaguars.

After the tiger and the lion the jaguar is the third largest cat, becomes approximately 90-100kg heavy and becomes betweens 10-12 years old. There are about 15000-20000 specimens, most of them in the Amazon and Pantanal. The jaguar can be found between Mexico and Argentina in tropical rainforests, savannahs, bushland, swamps and semi-deserts.

Tired kitty cat

The jaguar prefers humid habitats close to the banks, often along river courses, where he can spend not only hunts his prey but also spend its resting period. Jaguars are quite diurnal, but spend 40 to 50 percent of the day resting.

The following photo shows the first jaguar we discovered. He slept, yawned, tried to hunt, swam and was not at all bothered by the tourists who followed him in boats along the shore for several hours.

Food

The jaguar has up to 85 prey animals, including deer, tapirs, armadillos, monkeys, sloths, fish, caimans, peccaries (navel pigs) and of course the capybara (water pig).

Good swimmer!

Despite its heavy physique, jaguars can climb very well and are very good swimmers. The jaguar also swims through rivers over longer distances, a characteristic that is otherwise only found in the tiger.