The jaguar (Panthera onca) is a big felid animal native to the Americas and the sole extant member of the genus Panthera. It has an unique coat with dots that transition to deeper rosettes on the sides and a pale yellow to tan colored fur. It is the biggest cat species in the Americas and the third largest in the world, with a body length of up to 1.85 m (6 ft 1 in).

Its strong bite allows it to pierce turtle and tortoise carapaces, as well as use a unique way of killing: it bites right through the skull of mammalian prey between the ears, delivering a deadly blow to the brain.

The jaguar most likely arrived in the Americas from Eurasia during the early Pleistocene over the Bering Strait land bridge. Jaguar skeletons discovered in the Americas date from 130,000 years ago. The range of the jaguar now stretches from extreme southern Arizona in the United States, through Mexico and much of Central America, the Amazon rainforest, and south to Paraguay and northern Argentina.

It may be found in both forested and open areas, although its preferred habitat is moist broadleaf forest, wetlands, and woodland areas in tropical and subtropical climates. It is a solitary, opportunistic, stalk-and-ambush apex predator that is good at swimming. It serves an essential function in ecological stabilization and prey population regulation as a keystone species.

Habitat degradation, fragmentation, poaching for body parts trafficking, and deaths in human–wildlife conflict scenarios, notably with ranchers in Central and South America, are all threats to the jaguar. Since 2002, the IUCN Red List has classified it as Near Threatened. Since the late 1990s, the wild population is estimated to have decreased.

Jaguar conservation priority areas include 51 Jaguar Conservation Units (JCUs), which are huge regions with at least 50 breeding jaguars. The JCUs are spread throughout 36 different countries, from Mexico to Argentina.

The jaguar is a muscular and compact mammal. It is the biggest cat endemic to the Americas and the world’s third largest cat, with the tiger and the lion being larger. Its coat varies in color from pale yellow to tan to reddish-yellow, with whitish ventral regions. The sides of the fur are adorned with rosettes. Rosettes can have one or many dots, and their forms and sizes vary.

The spots on the head and neck, as well as those on the tail, are typically solid, however they may combine to form a band. In regions with thick foliage and uneven shadows, these patterns function as concealment. Jaguars in forests are often darker and smaller than those in open regions, presumably due to the lower amount of big, herbivorous prey in forest areas.

While the jaguar is similar to the leopard in appearance, it is more muscular, with stockier limbs and a squarer skull. On a jaguar’s coat, the rosettes are bigger, darker, fewer in number, and have thicker lines, with a small patch in the center.

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