All About Jaguars

Enigmatic, graceful, and powerful.

For millennia, jaguars have served as potent cultural icons for many indigenous American people from the Mayans and Incas, to the Guaraní Indians of the Gran Chaco. The Maya believed the jaguar's skin symbolized the night sky, while the Aztecs fed the hearts of sacrificial victims to the big cats. Among Amazonian societies, the jaguar, with its shining, reflective eyes, were thought to connect to the spirit world.

                                                              Photo by Fabricio Díaz Santos

Photo by John Polisar

Today, Jaguars remain an important symbol in many religious and artistic expressions in the New World. However, there is a growing conflict between those that would honor the jaguar for its spiritual, cultural and ecological significance with those that continue to cause its decline. The Wildlife Conservation Society categorizes jaguars as landscape species meaning that they require more than one habitat for their survival, are critical to the survival of many other species, and have a strong cultural significance.
 

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[Jaguar Ecology]   [Threats to Jaguars]