1 - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

-i ' Ti.
when these large prey gradually became
extinct, and only smaller and harder to
catch animals were around to eat, the
heavy saber-toothed cats, with their
cumbersome swords, were in trouble.
They could not compete with the faster
and more agile felines for this new type
of food, and in time passed from the
scene themselves. Old Dinictis' line, on
the other hand, still flourishes today,
and thus the jaguar, having picked the
right ancestor, dines in style, rejoicing in
that highly efficient tooth set-up bequeathed
him by his venerable forebear.
The jaguar is quite a fisherman, and
hence haunts impenetrable thickets
along river bottoms where the fishing is
good. Crouching along a bank, or
stretched out on a low hanging limb, he
puts his mind on his work. But what with
his face hung out over the water, and
what with a drool of anticipation now and
then and an occasional nervous twitch of
his tail end, the fishing jaguar has been
the subject of many a fanciful tale. He's
credited with spitting into the water to
attract the fish, of moving his whiskers
on its surface like flies alighting, and
even enlisting the aid of his tail as a
moving lure. The fact of the matter is
that all it takes is patience, of which he
has an endless supply, a careless fish
cruising by, and a lightning swift flick of
one of his front paws, and the jaguar has
landed his fish dinner.
34 Desert/December 1976
The mating season has its highlights
in December and January, and is wont
with members of the cat tribe, is accompanied
by loud and long sound effects.
Fighting, clawing and biting are also on
the program, all evidence, apparently, of
feline tender passion. Small wonder
that, after all this energy expenditure,
the pair settles for at least one season of
domesticity, gestation takes some 93 to
110 days, and the favorite nursery den
sites are rocky caves or dense
thickets. The two to four kittens arriving
in April or May are well clad in long
wooly fur, heavily spotted, and they
weigh about two pounds. Dining first on
milk, they are ready ere long for more
vigorous stuff, and both parents work
the fresh meat detail. By the time the kittens
are about six weeks old and have
doubled their weight, they can follow the
adults, albeit somewhat clumsily. The
family is maintained until the kittens are
at least a year old when, as teen-agers,
they weigh around 100 pounds or so.
They may remain with their mother then
up to two years since, while they have inherited
hunting know-how, they actually
require considerable training and need
lots of practice. Also, they are slow
growers, and can't bring down big game
until they have the weight and power
that comes with maturity.
And power they do get, these largest
of American cats. Bigger than a puma,
the jaguar has a much heavier and
stronger body, its limbs are shorter and
so is its tail. Interesting enough,
throughout sections of the jaguar's
range, the puma is also there, a situation
with explosive possibilities. Yet, there is
seldom trouble mainly because of their
way of sharing the scenery. The puma
likes high places and rocks ledges, the
open terrain for him. The jaguar, on the
contrary, is no hand for altitudes, preferring
the canyon bottoms, the dense,