The striking yellow eyes of a jaguar glared at me through the tall, thick grass. 

Locking with mine they conveyed instinct and wildness, stirring the deepest parts of my soul. As a young boy, I dreamed of such an encounter and was now living it in hyper reality. 

Although it felt so, we were not in a remote corner of the Amazon or the highland deserts of Mexico but the Exotic Cat and Wildlife Refuge in Kirbyville, TX. For two ears I volunteered there and had the incredible opportunity to get firsthand experience with jaguars, including "Tasha", described above.

To speak of an animal’s intelligence is to risk personification, but it was easy to tell something more than contemplating her next meal was going on behind Tasha’s eyes. Jaguars are arguably the world's most intelligent cats and they are the most misunderstood. While the habits of lions and tigers are part of the public consciousness, jaguars remain enshrouded in mystery as deep as their jungle homes.

                                                                       
                                                               The author with "Tasha" circa 1996.

Jaguars are known for escorting men out of their territory. Keeping a safe distance but letting people know they are watching, the big cats follow people until they leave their range.

"I've spent a lot of time in the wilds of Belize and have heard numerous stories of jaguars following people out of the jungle almost as if to make sure they leave. There the cat is feared but also highly respected," said Phillip Samuels, a globe-trotting fish guide.

Samuels recounted a mountain hiking excursion in Belize's interior when he came across a cattle depredation believed to be the work of a jaguar.

"There was a man standing over this huge, bloody, dead bull waving us away. He was saying a jaguar had made the kill and was somewhere nearby. Let's just say I didn't waste any time going back from where I came."

Hunting is one of many areas that separate jaguars from the other big cats. Lions hunt in prides while tigers use brute force and seem to show little discrimination in their killing. Leopards, the smallest of the big cats, rely on lighting speed to survive amongst lions, hyenas and other competition. The jaguar however is methodical.

"One thing I have learned all these years of working with jaguars is they never forget anything. They file everything they experience, which makes them far more intelligent than most people realize," said Monique Woodard curator of the Exotic Cat and Wildlife Refuge.

As detailed in John James Audubon’s The Quadrupeds of North America, jaguars actually go fishing. No, not just hunting down fish in shallow streams, but luring them on purpose.

“The jaguar is reported to stand in the water out of the stream and drop its saliva, which, floating on the surface, draws the fish after it within reach, when it seizes them with the paw, and throws them ashore for food,” Audubon wrote.

The Arizona Fish and Game Department says they are a patient hunter of fish. Their researchers have gathered reports of jaguars waiting by the edge of the water and hitting the surface with their tail to lure fish within range of their claws.

The first settlers of Texas thought the jaguar to be very dangerous and said they would come in to small military outposts at night but would first observe the group from a distance by the light campfire. They alleged the cat would take out the leader first as he slept and then take out the rest of the group. The truth of this is highly debatable, but it goes to show people have noted the intelligence of these cats long before the modern era of zoology.

                                                         
                                                                      Photo by Chester Moore, Jr.

While there have been verified attacks of jaguars on humans, they are extremely rare in comparison to lions, leopards and tigers.

"Jaguars are smart enough to know man poses problems, which is why there are very few instances of them preying on humans," Woodard said.

This trait might just be what is allowing them to cross into the United States relatively undetected and without incident.

Since 1996, there have been numerous confirmed eyewitness reports and game camera photos of jaguars collected by researchers in New Mexico and Arizona. Researchers hypothesize while most thought jaguars had been eliminated from northern Mexico, they either seem to be coming back to the region or have always been there and are increasing in numbers. The jaguars captured on film in Arizona and New Mexico seem to be males, which can travel as far as 500 miles looking for a mate, however some of the photos are not clear enough to establish sex.

In Texas, there is debate over when the last “verified” jaguar sighting occurred, but there are several sightings worth noting. 

The official strategy paper of the multi-agency Jaguar Conservation Team detailed that, “a newspaper report of a female killed and her 2 kittens captured in the Chiricahua Mountains in 1906 Texas, but they had become extremely rare.”

It also quoted researcher Robert as saying, “An established population once occurred in the dense thickets along the lower Nueces River and northeast to the Guadalupe River. He suggested that jaguars probably continued to wander from Mexico into the brush country of the southernmost part of the state. However, brush clearing and urbanization along the Texas/Mexico border has probably reduced chances for reestablishment of the species in Texas.”

But has it?

While it is true, the Rio Grande Valley is not conducive for wildlife migration due to agriculture, the Trans Pecos is not much different than it was when Spanish explorers came to Texas more than 500 years ago.  If jaguars are showing up in Arizona and New Mexico, there is no reason they could not live in the highly remote areas of the Trans Pecos region. Of all of the border areas in the United States, that one is the wildest and could easily house a small population of jaguars.

In reality, scientists knows little about jaguars and their mysterious habits although it is certain they have a large home range and are moving northward.

In recent years, black bears have reestablished populations in the Trans Pecos and East Texas. Gray wolves have migrated from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as far south as Missouri and the ivory-billed woodpecker once thought extinct is proven to be alive in Arkansas and under study. Finding out that jaguars inhabit the badlands along the Rio Grande corridor would not surprise me at all. 

There could be one on Texas soil right now, blending into the brush, taking in all it sees and eluding man as jaguars do.
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Jaguar Factoids

#Throughout much of its range, the jaguar is called “el tigre” or “the tiger” for it is the closest thing settlers of the new world could compare to the tiger, which had been known around the world since Roman conquerors brought them back to Europe as gifts for their rulers. 

#Jaguars are the largest cats in the western hemisphere with the heaviest on record topping out at 347 pounds and specimens in some regions averaging well over 200 pounds.

#The “black panthers” seen on television and in zoos are actually black jaguars or leopards. Both species produce "melanistic" or black offspring on occasion. There is actually no separate species as a “black panther”.

#Jaguars regularly feed on tapirs (a large pig-like creature in the Amazon region) and wild boars. They are the only cat species known to kill prey by actually biting through the skull and piercing the brain and kill animals as large as a ton. One jaguar reportedly killed an 800-pound horse and dragged it for more than half a mile before stopping to enjoy its meal.

#The agile cats prey on alligators and are equally at home in the water as they are on land. Researchers have observed them swimming large stretches of the Amazon River to islands and reportedly like to not only hunt in the water but play there as well.

By Chester Moore, Jr.