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Alexander Center For Applied Population Biology
Camera-Shy Cats
Spot the Difference
While jaguars and leopards look like identical twins to some, there are ways
to spot the differences. Jaguars have stockier and heavier builds than
leopards and shorter, thicker tails. Even their spots, called rosettes,
display differences. Jaguar rosettes tend to be larger and contain other
small spots inside them to improve their camouflage. Outside of zoos, the
two cats call very different places home: jaguars are indigenous to South
and Central America while leopards range over many parts of Africa and Asia.
The stocky-framed jaguar (above) is covered in rosettes containing dots and dark patches. The leaner leopard (below) is peppered with spots forming open rosettes.
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Field biologists Augustin Pariolo and Carlos DeAngelo use camera traps to identify individual jaguars by their unique coat patterns.
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Suppose you’re a biologist interested in studying, and saving, jaguars. Where should you start? Like all scientists with a problem to solve, you’re
going to need to collect data on the problem. But what exactly is the
jaguar's problem? Perhaps it’s diet: the jaguar’s preferred prey is not as
abundant as it once was. Perhaps the problem is habitat: new towns, farms
and cattle ranches are encroaching upon the jaguar’s territory. Maybe a
disease or parasite is spreading through the population, taking its toll on
the young, the old, the weak. Perhaps poaching and extermination, illegal in
most countries, is on the rise again. “It’s really easy to say those words ‘collect the data’,” notes Joanne Earnhardt, Ph.D., Director of the Alexander Center for Applied Population Biology at the zoo. “Getting the
data isn’t so easy. Just identifying what the right questions are to ask
when investigating a complex problem like the jaguars can be difficult.”
Dozens of scientific teams from dozens of countries are investigating each
of the above scenarios yet the work is painstakingly slow and indirect. The
jaguar’s nocturnal habits and love of privacy make the species notoriously
difficult to study: each researcher spends weeks or months focusing on one
small territory and one small piece of the problem. Despite the species’
obvious charisma, basic data—how long a jaguar lives in the wild, how many
young are born in a litter—are missing. One field- research team in
Argentina, whose three members have 25 years of jaguar experience between
them, has yet to come face to face with a jaguar in the wild.
Next: National Monuments and Chance Encounters
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