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Can you tell the difference between a jaguar and a leopard?
While both of these cats have rosettes on their fur, jaguars will have spots within those rosettes – leopards don’t. That’s the key to telling them apart when you’re not sure which is which.1
Jaguars are one of the largest cats in the world, and they win the prize of being the largest cat in the U.S.1&2
They have faced many challenges due to habitat loss and fragmentation.2 While once they were found from the southern U.S. to Argentina, they now are found mainly in Brazil.1 They’ve lost more than 50% of their original territory.2
With habitat fragmentation, they are isolated from other jaguars. This causes health problems in their populations because when they can’t reach other populations, they end up inbreeding with those they can reach, and weaker genes end up passed onto the offspring.2
One solution to this is creating wildlife corridors so that jaguars have routes to find other jaguars and mate with them. Another solution to help them is to work with ranchers to compensate for lost livestock so that jaguars aren’t villainized and retaliated against.2
Did you catch our blog on leopards? Check it out!
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