The bear's mangled skull fits a distinctive pattern of jaguar kills: the big cats commonly dispatch capybaras by puncturing their braincase, a feat that requires precise fang placement and massive crushing power. In the Smithsonian article, Bugbee speculates El Jefe could have taken down the black bear by ambushing the unsuspecting animal as it foraged. That same muscle power and ease in the water come in handy when hunting supersized rodents – just watch this Brazilian jaguar in full submarine mode as it wrestles a capybara from the depths. And as this footage plainly shows, the bigs cats are not afraid to pounce on full-sized caimans in their watery element, showing some mind-boggling strength hauling the reptiles ashore. More comfortable getting their paws wet than most felines, they'll also cruise riverbanks and wetland fringes questing for huge capybaras, as well as caimans, which can make up nearly 50 percent of jaguar diets in water-logged habitats. They often actively prowl in search of prey, then attempt to stalk and kill any they encounter. " It was north against south, and south won," Neils tells Smithsonian.Īs El Jefe's bear lunch suggests, jaguars are opportunistic hunters. Such an event could only occur in the American Southwest or northern Mexico, where the stomping grounds of the mainly temperate black bear and the mainly tropical/subtropical jaguar overlap. The unusual find, Bugbee suggests, marks the first known instance of a jaguar preying on a black bear. According to Bugbee's colleague (and wife) Aletris Neils, with whom he runs the nonprofit Conservation CATalyst, the bear skeleton likely belonged to a young adult sow. Assisting with the El Jefe-tracking task was Bugbee's dog Mayke, a Belgian Malinois specially trained to sniff out jaguar and ocelot poop.īack at the lab, analysis later confirmed that jaguar scat collected at the scene contained bear hairs. While shadowing El Jefe in the Santa Rita backcountry, biologist Chris Bugbee discovered the strewn bones of a black bear, including a crushed, tooth-punctured skull (photographer Bill Hatcher was able to capture several snapshots of the remains). El Jefe, the only known wild jaguar in the United States, wandering the Santa Rita Mountains.
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