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Wild jaguar near Tucson, Arizona

Discussion in 'United States' started by Arizona Docent, 20 Sep 2013.

  1. Arizona Docent

    Arizona Docent Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Here is the most recent photo of the Sonoran jaguar that has been living in the Santa Rita mountains, which are next to my city of Tucson.
    Better photo of jaguar released
     
  2. TZFan

    TZFan Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Wow I didnt know Jaguars came that far north until you posted this. Thats amazing you live in an area with a wild Jaugar! Best I can muster is the fantom panther local twits keep reporting now and then or the imaginary caiman someone had supposedly let loose in a lake. But I can show you black bears and bald eagles who frequent our dump... lacks that exotic feel doesnt it? Thanks for teaching me something new about jaguars though.
     
  3. Arizona Docent

    Arizona Docent Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    The Southwest United States is the extreme northern fringe of the jaguar's range. There were a very small number of jaguars in Arizona into the early 20th century, before they were hunted out. Last known one (before recent return) was shot in 1960's I think.

    In 1996 there were two separate sightings by mountain lion trackers with hounds. One was on the Arizona - New Mexico border and one was in the mountains between Tucson and Mexico. This second one initiated a camera trap study that originally used film cameras and in the end (when technology advanced) switched to digital cameras. I work at the main photo lab in Tucson and the slide film from the original cameras was processed at my lab. I was there when the tracker picked up one of the rolls with one of the earliest jaguar photos. He looked at the roll on the light table, then called me over to take a look - so I was only the second person ever (right after him) to see the photo.

    The pictures of this survey (which is now over), were published in a very good book: Ambushed on the Jaguar Trail: Jack L. Childs, Anna Mary Childs: 9781933855097: Amazon.com: Books
     
  4. TZFan

    TZFan Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Thats so cool that you were the second person to see the photo! You have amazing luck.
     
  5. tschandler71

    tschandler71 Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    yea Docent it right, Jaguar probably ranged throughout the Southern half of the United States until as recently as the Columbian interchange. Lots of pre fossil (aka under 500 years old) Jaguar fossils are found stretching from Florida to California and as far north as Kentucky.

    Also Docent you seem to be the resident Big Cat expert. How would you rank the 6 big cat species (Lion Tiger Leopard Jaguar Snow Leopard and Clouded Leopard) in accordance with their genetic/ancestral relationships with one another?

    Clouded Leopard being the basal member of course but where would go after that?

    From basal to most derived. My best guess would be Clouded Leopard, Snow Leopard, Leopard, Lion, Tiger, Jaguar in order of splitting from the common ancestor.
     
    Last edited: 20 Sep 2013
  6. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    As I understand it, your assumption that each taxon represents a successive outgroup from the main line is incorrect - rather the genus Panthera represents two equally ranked clades. The first clade contains P.tigris and P.uncia. The second clade contains P.onca and a P.pardus/P.leo clade.

    |
    |
    |{ Tiger, Snow Leopard
    |
    |{ Jaguar ( Leopard, Lion)
     
  7. Quicksand

    Quicksand Active Member

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    Some idiot will kill it like they did the last one a couple years ago.
     
  8. DavidBrown

    DavidBrown Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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  9. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    He was euthanized due to renal failure, as I recall - as that article clearly states. The two most relevant points are:

    and

    I believe the final sentence in the latter quote demonstrates some degree of bias in the report - if a dog had terminal liver cancer and was put down, you would say it died of cancer and not a drug overdose :p the controversy is not in the euthanisation of the jaguar, but in the capture of the jaguar to do so after it became clear from radio-tracking that he was failing to move.
     
  10. Quicksand

    Quicksand Active Member

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    I don't remember anything about renal failure or anything. Sounds to me like that's just bs they made up afterward to keep themselves out of legal trouble for killing endangered species. I remember it was caught, released, then caught again days later and killed.
     
  11. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    Why would they track it for several years, catch it and radio tag it, if their real aim as you imply was to kill it eventually? :p It wasn't discovered days before being recaptured and euthanised, that individual had been known for some time.
     
  12. Arizona Docent

    Arizona Docent Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    The individual - named Macho B - was estimated to be 16 years old. That is beyond the typical life expectancy of any wild cat living in the wild. In captivity, of course, they often live longer. The question - which there is no 100% way to prove - is did the stress of the initial capture cause him to die prematurely? A lot of people think it did and it certainly does look that way. Hindsight is 20/20 and of course if the people involved had known what would have happened, they would not have collared it. But the opportunity to get movement data on a wild jaguar in the United States was unprecedented and I think it was seen as too good an opportunity to pass up.

    Capture and radio collar is always risky, which is why I think the current movement in field studies is towards camera traps and away from radio collaring.
     
  13. elefante

    elefante Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Here's hoping that jaguars can eventually reestablish themselves in the Southwest.
     
  14. Buldeo

    Buldeo Well-Known Member

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    I wonder if the firearm maximalists in Arizona will cause as much hullabaloo as they did here in California over a single wolf.


    Thanks for sharing this exciting news!

    What's the mountain lion population like in that part of the state? Could a jaguar population effectively establish themselves in the region without decimating the food sources?
     
  15. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    they co-exist quite well in the rest of the Americas.....
     
  16. IanRRobinson

    IanRRobinson Well-Known Member

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    It is interesting that there's no suggestion that the Jaguar ever ranged north into more temperate areas of the US.

    It does seem that it can't handle cold in the same way that either Tiger or Leopard can. The Jaguar's range doesn't seem to have ever gone very far south into Patagonia, either.
     
  17. tschandler71

    tschandler71 Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Ian I wonder if its climate or prey related. Can a jaguar catch a whitetail/mule deer in open space?
     
  18. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    This said, the mountain lion populations within the range of the jaguar tend to be significantly smaller than those in North America, and predation is primarily focused on smaller prey - therefore their size in the northern extents of the species range is something which I suspect will be an adaptation to take advantage of the niche which ordinarily would be filled by the jaguar.

     
  19. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    I wonder whether this is merely a relic of the time thousands of years ago when more temperate areas of the US *did* contain a competitor for the Jaguar whose presence would have precluded expansion of the latter species range; this species of course being the American Lion (Panthera atrox) which went extinct approximately 10,000 years ago.

    In this case, the fact that the species failed to expand once P.atrox was gone could be due to the fact that the already-present Mountain Lion, which at that point in time may have filled the same predatory niche as the species does in South America (as I just posted above) was in place to expand into the niche before it was possible for the Jaguar to do so to any great extent.
     
  20. tschandler71

    tschandler71 Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Possible Dave, and all this seems to tie into the same reasons the Dire Wolf and American Lion ultimately went extinct but the Gray wolf and Mountain lion survived. The larger two species ultimately could not catch the swifter remaining pronghorn/deer after being adapted to hunting the giant bison, mammoths etc. And some people also say the "American Cheetah" was actually closer to the Mountain Lion and represented a plains hunter that could run down pronghorn. I wonder if Panthera Atrox is some kind of Lion/Jaguar intermediate anyway.