Mother Jaguar Flirt to Save their Cubs Life : Anti-infanticide Strategy

In 2020, almost sometime during Valentine's Day, love was in the air-Jaquar love. In Hato la Aurora nature Reserve in Colombia's tropical Savanna region, big cats were spotted, which tumbled in the grass, sending throaty mating growls through the grasses. When Dian Stasjuknas, wildcat ecologist for big cat conservation philanthropy panthera saw videos of tryst, however, she was concerned.

Observers has recently photographed the growling female jaquar hunting as well as playing with her month old cub, she was cavorting with a male jaguar, and no one had seen her offspring for days. After few days, a young cat reappeared with its mother, few days later, Stasiukynas realized, she may have witnessed a never-before-seen anti-infanticide strategy.

Male Jaquar sometimes, they tend to kill young cubs, those which are not of their own, so that they can mate with their mothers. Such violence frees up a potential partner and also it may eliminate a future competitor, but it does come at a very high cost to the females.

These type of battle of sexes also does occur in other big cats as well. Mother lion as well as pumas tend to hide their young during sex in order to prevent infanticide. This tactic may trick numerous male into believing a cub is their own to discourage them from killing it. A flirty escapade may also help in boosting the male's perception own sexual success, leaving them les likely to commit infanticide out of desperation.

Stasiukynas as well as colleagues have found that female jaguars use similar, hide as well as flirt tactics. In order protect their cubs from infanticidal males, they report in Acta Ehtologica. After they witnessing this Valentine Day Tumble, Stasiukynas combed through the literature and found no reports of similar behavior in jaguars. But, when she started sharing this story with her colleagues in Brazil, she has found that, thy had also witnessing a nursing mother jaguar engaging in courtship activities. In two of the cases- in the Lianos of Colombia as well as northern Pantanal in Brazil, the mothers have reunited with their cubs afterward. The observations are the 1st published examples of jaguars, thus using the anti-infanticide tactics in the wild, she states.

For few observers, the courtship rituals are not very romantic, jaguar flirting is not soft, Stasiukynas states. Jaguars do engage in precoital mock fight, during these times, the female tend to bare here teeth and makes guttural vocalizations. A pair of jaguars typically spend around 2 to 3 days sparing in between bouts of sex.

Researchers do not have idea, as to how the stashed cubs pass their days, this one is real testament to their hiding abilities. Florida panther kittens in similar scenarios, tend to lose nearing to 20% of their body weight, hence their mother is entertaining suitors. But Jaguars dens are such well kept secrets that expert really do not have much clue, as to how cubs fare in their mother's absence or even how long they may stay hidden.

The new results are significant eventhough the small number of observations, states that, Ronaldo Morato, an researcher, who tend to study the jaguar movement ecology as the head of National Predator Center at the Chico Mendes institute for Biodiversity conservation. We require to concentrate efforts in order to collect more these kind of data about the natural history of this species.

Jaguars living in the denser rainforest may also use varied strategies states, Stasiukynas, who notes that, all the observations in the new study were in Savanna regions, that only provide sparse riverside forests for cover.

As tourism has increased, more frequent encounter with jaguars tend to happen, researches would more likely gain more insight into anti-infanticide behaviors. And understanding as to how the female jaguars tend to hide their cubs in varied environments may help conservationists reduce infanticide, stasiuknas states. If we able to know little bit more about jaguar reproduction, may be we would be able to take conservation action in the 1st few years of life.