Jaguar preys on crocodiles. Is it really as simple as a cat eating fish?

Jaguar is one of the few cats that can kill crocodiles. Apart from jaguars, only the smallest tiger among cats, the Sumatra tiger, feeds on crocodiles. So, is it really as simple for a jaguar to kill crocodiles as a cat to eat "fish"? Let's discuss this interesting problem together.

Fierce big cat-Jaguar Jaguar is another name for Jaguar, so it is named because its shape is very close to that of tiger. Jaguar is the king of tropical rain forest in South America and the top animal in the food chain in South America. In the whole feline family, jaguars can rank third in size, second only to tigers and lions.

The average length of an adult jaguar is about 2.3m, and its average weight is about120kg. Although jaguar is not excellent only by looking at the size data, it is as fierce as any cat.

Jaguars mainly live in the rainforests of South America, and their prey also includes all the wild animals in the rainforests of South America. Jaguar's main prey are mostly larger animals, such as capybara, sloth, tortoise, monkey, crocodile and so on. Even the largest snake in the world, the Amazon python, can kill it. It is not difficult to find that the main habitat of jaguar is close to the water source, such as capybara, turtle, crocodile and so on.

Although jaguars are not as big as liger, they surpass liger in one thing, that is, bite force. In addition to flexibility, big cats also have excellent bite force. Generally speaking, the average bite force of a lion is about 360 kg, that of a tiger is about 450 kg and that of a jaguar is as high as 560 kg.

The reason why jaguar has such a large bite force has a lot to do with its large head ratio. Compared with lions and tigers, jaguars have a larger ratio of head to body, and a larger head ratio means stronger muscle and tooth structure.

Because of its strong bite force, jaguars hunt differently from other cats. Most cats are used to attacking their backs or locking their throats when hunting, but jaguars like to blow their heads off, which is the main reason why they can kill crocodiles.

Cats love fish? In many people's cognition, cats seem to have a soft spot for fish. But is this really the case? Let's discuss this seemingly uncontroversial problem together.

As we all know, the ancestors of domestic cats were domesticated by wild cats. So, let's take a look at the feeding habits of wild cats. There are 27 different subspecies of wild cats in existence, which are distributed almost all over the world. Wildcats are pure carnivores. Because of their small size, their prey are mostly small and medium-sized animals, such as rodents (mice, etc. ), birds and some small mammals.

From the main food of the wild cats above, we didn't find the shadow of fish. In other words, fish is not a staple food for cats. We can look at all the cat recipes. Fish is not their staple food in their diet.

Therefore, it is really debatable to say that cats love to eat fish. More precisely, cats like to eat meat, and fish itself is a kind of meat.

Jaguar likes to kill crocodiles. Is it really just that cats like to eat fish? The answer is obviously no, why do you say that? There are three reasons.

0 1 Fish is not the staple food of jaguars.

Fish is not the main food in the diet of small cats like cats, let alone big cats like jaguars. How many fish do you want to catch to eat? And although the crocodile has the word "fish" in its name, it is not a fish, because it swims in the water like a fish, so it is named. Therefore, there is no situation that jaguars love to eat fish and regard crocodiles as fish. Moreover, underwater fishing is undoubtedly a huge physical consumption for cats with fur all over their bodies. Therefore, killing crocodiles is more cost-effective than wasting fish in crocodiles.

opportunist

The leopard's diet includes almost all the animals in the South American rainforest, which just proves that the leopard is an opportunist. Moreover, jaguars are mostly active near water sources, so they naturally will not let go of crocodiles that often appear on the shore or in the water.

In other words, jaguars kill crocodiles just to survive, just as they kill wild deer. No preference.

Crocodiles killed by jaguars

In the rainforests of South America, there are seven different kinds of crocodiles, four of which belong to the Caiman subfamily of alligators and three belong to real crocodiles (such as alligators and crocodiles in Guatemala). Not all crocodiles will be killed by jaguars, but the relatively small Caiman is its target.

As we said earlier, caiman is a subfamily, and there are four different caiman-black caiman, eye caiman, Paraguay caiman and wide-billed caiman. Except for the caiman (the male is close to 3 meters long), the other three kinds of caiman are often hunted by jaguars because of their small size.

In other words, when jaguars choose food, they will try to choose animals smaller than themselves to kill, so the risk is relatively small.

To sum up, jaguars kill crocodiles only as a kind of prey that often appears in their own activities, just like they kill capybara and wild deer, and they have no special preference. In addition, the question whether fish like to eat fish remains to be discussed.

Therefore, it is not as simple for a leopard to kill a crocodile as a cat eats "fish", because in the leopard's view, a crocodile is nothing special, just a lump of meat.