The jaguar (Panthera onca) is a large cat species and the only living member of the genus Panthera that is native to the Americas. Its distinctively marked coat features pale yellow to tan colored fur covered by spots that transition to rosettes on the sides, although a melanistic black coat appears in some individuals. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the biggest cat species in the Americas and the third largest in the world. The jaguar's powerful bite allows it to pierce the carapaces of turtles and tortoises, and to employ an unusual killing method: it bites directly through the skull of mammalian prey between the ears to deliver a fatal blow to the brain.
The modern jaguar's ancestors probably entered the Americas from Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene via the land bridge that once spanned the Bering Strait. The oldest jaguar fossils found in North America date to between . Today, the jaguar's range extends from the Southwestern United States across Mexico and much of Central America, the Amazon rainforest and south to Paraguay and northern Argentina. It inhabits a variety of forested and open terrains, but its preferred habitat is tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest, wetlands and wooded regions. It is adept at swimming and is largely a solitary, opportunistic, stalk-and-ambush apex predator. As a keystone species, it plays an important role in stabilizing ecosystems and in regulating prey populations.
The jaguar is threatened by habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, poaching for trade with its body parts and killings in human–wildlife conflict situations, particularly with ranchers in Central and South America. It has been listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List since 2002. The wild population is thought to have declined since the late 1990s. Priority areas for jaguar conservation comprise 51 large areas inhabited by at least 50 breeding individuals, called Jaguar Conservation Units. They are located in 36 geographic regions from Mexico to Argentina.
The jaguar has featured prominently in the mythology of indigenous peoples of the Americas, including those of the Aztec and Maya civilizations.
Etymology
The word "jaguar" is possibly derived from the Tupi-Guarani word meaning 'wild beast that overcomes its prey at a bound'.
"Onca" is derived from the Portuguese name for a spotted cat that is larger than a lynx; cf. ounce. The word "panther" is derived from classical Latin , itself from the ancient Greek ().
In North America, the word is pronounced with two syllables, as , while in British English, it is pronounced with three, as .
Taxonomy and evolution
Taxonomy
In 1758, Carl Linnaeus described the jaguar in his work Systema Naturae and gave it the scientific name Felis onca.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, several jaguar type specimens formed the basis for descriptions of subspecies.
Pocock did not have access to sufficient zoological specimens to critically evaluate their subspecific status but expressed doubt about the status of several. Later consideration of his work suggested only three subspecies should be recognized. The description of P. o. palustris was based on a fossil skull.
By 2005, nine subspecies were considered to be valid taxa:
- P. o. hernandesii the type specimen was a jaguar from Mazatlán in Mexico.
- P. o. palustris the type specimen was a fossil jaguar mandible excavated in the Sierras Pampeanas of Córdova District, Argentina.
- P. o. centralis the type specimen was a skull of a male jaguar from Talamanca, Costa Rica.
- P. o. goldmani the type specimen was a jaguar skin from Yohatlan in Campeche, Mexico.
- P. o. arizonensis the type specimen was a skin and skull of a male jaguar from the vicinity of Cibecue, Arizona.
- P. o. veraecrucis the type specimen was a skull of a male jaguar from San Andrés Tuxtla in Mexico.
Reginald Innes Pocock placed the jaguar in the genus Panthera and observed that it shares several morphological features with the leopard (P. pardus). He, therefore, concluded that they are most closely related to each other. DNA analysis of 84 jaguar samples from South America revealed that the gene flow between jaguar populations in Colombia was high in the past. Since 2017, the jaguar is considered to be a monotypic taxon, though the modern Panthera onca onca is still distinguished from two fossil subspecies, Panthera onca augusta and Panthera onca mesembrina. However, the 2024 study suggested that the validity of subspecific assignments on both P. o. augusta and P. o. mesembrina remains unresolved, since both fossil and living jaguars show a considerable variation in morphometry.
Evolution
thumb|right|Fossil skull of P. o. augusta
The Panthera lineage is estimated to have genetically diverged from the common ancestor of the Felidae around to . Some genetic analyses place the jaguar as a sister species to the lion with which it diverged ,
The lineage of the jaguar appears to have originated in Africa and spread to Eurasia 1.95–1.77 mya. The living jaguar species is often suggested to have descended from the Eurasian Panthera gombaszogensis. The ancestor of the jaguar entered the American continent via Beringia, the land bridge that once spanned the Bering Strait, Some authors have disputed the close relationship between P. gombaszogensis (which is primarily known from Eurasia) and the modern jaguar. The oldest fossils of modern jaguars (P. onca) have been found in North America dating between 850,000-820,000 years ago.
Two extinct subspecies of jaguar are recognized in the fossil record: the North American P. o. augusta and South American P. o. mesembrina.
The oldest jaguar fossil from the rancholabrean age has been estimated to be 38,600 years old and was excavated at Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve.