Jaguars in the Pantanal

This was from our Wildside Nature Tours August 2011 trip to the Pantanal, in Brazil.

The Pantanal may be the best place in the world to have a chance of seeing a jaguar. In order to do so one needs to take a boat and scour the river banks early in the day and later in the afternoon. Jaguars like to rest in these locations, take in the morning sun, keep a eye on Capybara their favourite prey, and stroll down to the river’s edge at dusk before heading off to hunt in the dark.

With the boat rocking it is tough to steady the video, but this sequence shows four of the six jaguars that we encountered that day!!!

It begins with one jaguar sunning itself on the bank. While being enthralled with our sighting, we heard a jaguar growling on the other side of the river, so we made our way over to investigate. We could not believe our luck when we saw a male jaguar resting on the sand. To our amazement he was soon joined by another one. I was wrong when I thought this was a pair and they were going to mate – it was another male!! One of the males then goes and rests on the bank, and a third jaguar, a female, enters the picture and joins the other male. This was now well beyond anything that I had ever imagined possible in our quest to see a jaguar. The resting male then walks into the forest and the other two disperse shortly thereafter.  Our luck continued as we encounter him further down the river as he walks along the riverbank.

Sightings of jaguars are by no means a guarantee. If we had encountered one jaguar it would have been considered a major success, but to see six in a day is unheard of. As you can imagine it was an absolutely magical day!