Image: Daniel Kantek
When we think of cats, we don’t usually think of water. A few species of cats do love water however, and do swim. One of those species is the jaguar.
Jaguars are the largest cats in the Western Hemisphere. There are more jaguars in Brazil than in any other place on Earth. The Pantanal is a large complex of wetlands and grasslands in western Brazil, and it has the highest concentration of jaguars known.
Scientists have discovered that jaguars in the Taiamã Ecological Station in the Pantanal not only love to swim, but they also love to fish. These jaguars eat mostly fish and caimans, a type of crocodilian. An aquatic diet is unusual in jaguars, which hunt terrestrial (land) animals across most of their range in Central and South America.
Learn more about the fishing jaguars of the Pantanal on Mongabay.com:
Original article by Dimas Marques/Fauna News, translated by Roberto Cataldo –
