Jaguar

The jaguar is the biggest wild cat in the Americas and the third-largest cat in the world, after the tiger and the lion. Its golden coat is covered in dark rings called rosettes, and unlike a leopard's, most jaguar rosettes have a small dot in the middle. Jaguars live from the southwestern edge of the United States and Mexico, through Central America, down to northern Argentina, and their biggest stronghold today is the Amazon rainforest.

Jaguars are famous for loving water. In the Pantanal, a huge wetland in Brazil, they swim across rivers and hunt caimans, which are relatives of crocodiles. For thousands of years people in the Americas have honoured the jaguar as a symbol of strength, and its image appears in the art and ruins of ancient cultures such as the Maya. Today it is listed as Near Threatened, because its forests are being cut down.

Where it lives

Jaguars are most at home in thick tropical rainforests and swamps, and they usually live near rivers and lakes. They can also survive in drier places such as grasslands, scrub and even near deserts. Since the late 1800s they have lost more than half of the land where they once roamed, which used to stretch widely from central Argentina all the way to the southwestern United States. Each jaguar keeps its own territory and marks it with scratches on trees and scent, so other jaguars know the area is taken.

What it eats

Jaguars are meat-eaters that hunt more than 85 kinds of animals, including deer, peccaries (a kind of wild pig), tapirs, capybaras, fish and turtles. They do not chase prey over long distances like cheetahs. Instead they creep close and ambush, often at night. Their jaws are among the strongest of any cat, and they often kill with a single bite to the back of the skull, something few other cats do. That bite is strong enough to break through a turtle's shell.

Family life

Adult jaguars live alone and meet only to mate. A mother raises her one to four cubs by herself. The cubs are born blind and helpless, with woolly fur, and open their eyes after a few days. By six to eight weeks old they can follow their mother around, and they stay with her for about two years while they learn to hunt. Like lions and tigers, jaguars can roar; a male's roar sounds like a bark followed by a growl, while a female's sounds more like a coughing roar.

On the globe

The model shows a spotted jaguar in the Pantanal wetlands of Brazil, where real jaguars swim after prey. Zoom in to watch it prowl and look for the rosette pattern on its coat.