Lessons in survival from wild #jaguars

Simon Worrall, Oct 28, 2014, DHNS:

In conversation Simon Worrall talks to Klan Rabinowitz, who is a pioneer in the jaguar conservation initiative.


Klan Rabinowitz, author of Jaguar: An Indomitable Beast, has devoted his life to studying and protecting jaguars. He established the world’s first jaguar sanctuary, the Cockscomb Basin Preserve, in Belize. And he was the moving force behind identifying and securing jaguar corridors throughout Central and South America.

Speaking from his home in New York, he talks about how looking to jaguars could help us deal with problems we face, like climate change. Excerpts:

You call the jaguar the “sumo wrestler of the animal world.” What do you mean by that?

The jaguar is the largest cat in the Western Hemisphere and the third largest cat in the world, behind lions and tigers. But compared with a lion or a tiger, the jaguar looks like a fireplug. It’s got a massive skull, similar to a tiger’s and lion’s skull; a big, stocky body, which is much larger and more physically powerful than a leopard or even a mountain lion; short, stocky limbs; and a low center of gravity. All the good characteristics of a top-notch sumo wrestler.

I read somewhere that jaguars are the only big cat that can’t be tamed, which is why they have never featured in circus acts. Is that right? They can’t be tamed in the manner that lions, tigers and even leopards can be. They’re much more unpredictable. I could see that as a kid. At the Bronx Zoo, all the other cats were doing almost what was expected of them: coming to the bars, charging at people, vocalising. The jaguar just sat back.
If there’s one defining characteristic that distinguishes it from the other big cats, it’s that you never know what a jaguar is thinking.

There have been people who have brought jaguars up as cubs and tried to tame them. But many of those people have had accidents. The jaguar is not a predictable, tame animal. That’s why you don’t see them in circus acts. You don’t even often see them in zoos, because they’re not a good exhibition animal. They’re a lone, solitary, almost moody type of species.

The jaguar also kills in a unique way, doesn’t it? Tell us about BFQ.

BFQ stands for bite force quotient. And pound for pound, the bite of a jaguar is the most powerful of the big cats, even more than that of a tiger and a lion. The way they kill is different, too. Tigers and lions, and the other large cats, go for the necks or soft underbellies. Jaguars have only one way to kill: They go for the skull. I’ve actually seen where they’ve lifted the cranial cap off large animals, like a large tapir or a cow.

It’s the most incredible means of killing ­– terrifying and extremely fast. The jaguar is not typically an aggressive animal. But when it becomes aggressive, it’s with explosive force. It’s an ambush predator. A stalk-and-pounce animal. You won’t escape a jaguar if it wants to kill you.

I was amazed to discover that the precipitous decline in jaguar numbers in modern times was triggered by a fur coat worn by Jackie Kennedy.

It wasn’t Jackie’s fault, because it was legal at the time. It was 1962, and Jackie Kennedy came out wearing a leopard coat. It wasn’t a jaguar, as many people think. It was a leopard coat designed by Oleg Cassini. For years afterward he regretted having made that coat for Jackie Kennedy because it created such a huge fashion buzz. Wearing spotted coats became the thing to do.

And because of that, hundreds of thousands of spotted cats of all sizes – not just jaguars but leopards, ocelots, and margays - were killed. This caused such a precipitous decline in the spotted cat species, especially the jaguar, that finally, in 1975, an international convention called CITES implemented a ban on the trade of spotted cat fur coats. Sadly by that time, many jaguar populations had been wiped out and many of the more vibrant ones were down to dangerously low numbers.

Tell us about the Jaguar Corridor Initiative, which is perhaps your greatest achievement.

The beauty of the jaguar corridor is that it’s not my achievement at all! Because it was nothing we created. The jaguar corridor was always there. It’s just that we hadn’t seen it. Then new genetic tools became available in the late 1990s, using faeces to get at DNA. And what they showed was that there was no variation in the jaguar throughout its range.

In other words, there had to be travel pathways that the jaguars were using. It was no longer a matter of looking at maps or speculating. The DNA fingerprinting showed that the jaguar corridor was a reality. I just had to go and find it. Now we know that there is a genetic corridor in 18 countries throughout Central America and most of South America. The only countries where jaguars have gone extinct are El Salvador, Uruguay and Chile. We’re just starting South America – but it will take at least another 7 to 10 years.

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