It is not at all unusual to find people congratulating themselves upon the assumed fact that formidable brutes are unacquainted with their own strength and skill. This is one of the many mistakes made concerning lower animals.
Returning to the jaguar’s general description, one of his most eccentric propensities is the pursuit of alligators. The jaguar kills and eats these reptiles from choice; or in many instances, simply bites their tails off and lets them go. H. W. Bates found a recently-killed alligator partly eaten. Orton refers to this habit as well known, and both Smith and Wallace speak of it as a matter of common notoriety.
Like all species among the Felidæ, this one is nocturnal. Their “dull, deadly-looking eyes,” as Barton Premium describes them, are not adapted to excess of light. In remote and secluded places, however, and in the dark recesses of a tropical forest they prowl at all hours, and the author has met with these beasts in the full glare of a vertical sun.
When a jaguar sets out on a foraging expedition at night, he begins to roar like the lion as he leaves his lair; and again like his majesty, he keeps this up at more or less regular intervals until he actually begins to hunt. Jaguars are noisy animals at all times, says Darwin, but they are especially so upon stormy nights, when their “deep, grating roar” reverberates through the forest in a manner very impressive to those unaccustomed to the sound.
Like all animals with retractile claws, they are in the habit of sharpening them, as it is called; but it is not for the purpose of putting a point upon his talons that a jaguar draws them through the bark of trees. All the cats are given to trying how far they can reach, and all of them, both in killing game and feeding, get their nails clogged with shreds of flesh. It is to cleanse them that they scratch tree trunks, from time to time, as they go along. Darwin asserts that each animal has an especial tree to which he resorts for this purpose.
It is agreed among several authorities that a jaguar constantly strikes down, disables, and kills game with a blow of his massive forearm. At the same time, Wood, Humboldt, and Holder write as if death always ensued from dislocation of the neck. When a horse or some other large quadruped is seized, says the former, his assailant “leaps from an elevated spot upon the shoulders ... places one paw on the back of the head and another on the muzzle, and then with a single tremendous wrench breaks the neck.” So far as the act described is assumed to be of invariable occurrence many equally reliable accounts differ entirely, and the author knows from personal experience that jaguars will attack in front, make their assault on level ground, and in some instances do not attempt to kill either man or beast by forcing back the head.
Independently of other facts and considerations which bear upon this brute in its relation to man, the name by which it is known among the natives is more conclusive with regard to character than a host of witnesses. According to Burton the word jaguar is composed of the Indian (Tupi) ja we or us, and guara, an eater or devourer; and it may be assumed that when tribes of savages conferred such a designation as this, they had very good reason for doing so. It may be said, however, that other etymologies of the word have been given.
In the olden days of exploration, both Gonzalo Pizarro and Orellana spoke of the loss of human life from the depredations of jaguars; but, strange to relate, their successors, the accomplished missionary priests, Artiega and Acuna, have nothing to say about them in their sketch of the natural history of Northern Brazil.
Like tigers, lions, and panthers, the jaguar, no doubt, finds it easier to kill a man than almost any other animal that will afford him a full meal, and under favorable conditions he acts accordingly. Hence along the Brazilian frontier of Guiana where these beasts are very numerous, E. F. im Thurn relates that he found the forest tribes sleeping in hammocks swung high enough above the ground to be out of reach of a spring. J. W. Wells and the distinguished Waterton describe the way in which their tents were beset by jaguars. Humboldt tells how his mastiff was carried off from within his camp on the Rio Negro. Darwin mentions that “many woodcutters are killed by them on the Paraná,” and that they “have even entered vessels at night,” and Von Tschudi recounts how one broke into an Englishman’s hut, seized his boy, and bore him off into the forest.
When we examine the records of the first European travellers in those provinces infested by jaguars, their testimony with regard to its character is quite unanimous.