Jaguars have some of the strongest bites of any large cat. They have the ability to instantly kill and paralyze prey.
Steve Winter, a big cat photographer, went to Brazil’s Pantanal National Park to photograph jaguars. Scarface is the protagonist in the story of how he got one of his most incredible shots.
Winter had been relentlessly following the 10-year-old alpha jaguar for four days. Winter and his cameraman Bertie Gregory had seen the large cat with a split lip lunge at and miss over a dozen previous targets while traveling down a river that cuts through dense Brazilian forest. They were beginning to believe they wouldn’t be able to document a kill.
Winter describes how the lack of progress was getting to him. Winter sat with his camera under an umbrella rigged into a fishing pole holder, feeling the 115-degree Fahrenheit heat bear down on him.
Winter was ready to give up on the cat. “Then boom—he went underwater.”
What Winter documented next unfolded in only 15 seconds.
Bobbing his head underwater to firmly grasp his prey, Scarface emerged from the river with a caiman in his jaws.
Jaguars are big cats, the world’s third largest, but Winter’s photos show the caiman to be nearly twice as big.
Scarface drags the reptile completely out of the water and into dense forest cover, maneuvering quickly and gracefully out of the water.
Winter couldn’t see what happened next, but he believes the caiman’s fate was sealed once the jaguar’s powerful teeth punctured its vertebrae.
Winter says he was full of adrenaline when he finally saw Scarface make a kill, and his hand was cramping from holding down the shutter button on his camera for so long.
Fulfilling Meal
Caimans are a well-known source of food for jaguars, despite the fact that the hunting sequence is rarely documented.
During the dry season in this region, animals such as caimans and capybaras can be found in greater numbers in and around rivers.
“It’s like the jaguars’ supermarket,” says Winter.
Because of the way they hunt, Jaguars can keep larger, more powerful prey like caiman. Other big cats suffocate their prey by clamping their jaws around its neck. Jaguars kill by piercing their prey with powerful bites.
“Jaguars are built for power, not for speed,” notes Winter. “They have strong upper body strength, and an incredible jaw.”
He says he and his camera crew frequently saw jaguars swimming upstream for hours in search of dinner.
Winter said that jaguars ignore his small fishing boat in the Pantanal. The Brazilian nature reserve is the only fully protected area in their range, which stretches from the northern tip of Argentina to the US-Mexico border.
Winter hopes to return to the Pantanal and photograph more jaguars. He doubts Scarface, who is now more than a decade old, will still be alive. He expects to be pursued by a new alpha.
Src: thepressagge.com
