[ UA Jaguar 2014 01-16.jpg] Male jaguar photographed by automatic wildlife cameras in the Santa Rita Mountains on January 16, 2014, as part of a U.S.

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Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Southwest Reg… · Public domain

SpeciesCarnivoraFelidae

Carnivores

🐆Jaguar

Panthera onca (Linnaeus, 1758)

The jaguar is a large cat species and the only living member of the genus Panthera that is native to the Americas. Its distinctively marked coat features pale yellow to tan colored fur covered by spots that transition to rosettes on the sides, although a melanistic black coat appears in some individuals. With a body length of up to 1.85 m and a weight of up to 158 kg (348 lb), it is the biggest cat species in the Americas and the third largest in the world. The jaguar's powerful bite allows it to pierce the carapaces of turtles and tortoises, and to employ an unusual killing method: it bites directly through the skull of mammalian prey between the ears to deliver a fatal blow to the brain.

Text: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Measurements

vs you

≈ 1.3× your weight

Conservation status

NTNear threatened

IUCN Red List assessment, 2017.

Population trendDecreasing

Key measurements

Body mass: 81 kg
Body length: 1.59 m
Shoulder height: 0.71 m
Top speed: not recorded
Bite force: 1,014 N
Maximum lifespan: 28 years

All measurements ↓

Facts and figures

Everything we know about the Jaguar

Typical adult figures. Where a value is an estimate rather than a measurement, it says so.

Body mass

81 kg

COMBINE

Other figures ↓

Source: COMBINE · v1 (Soria et al. 2021) · CC BY 4.0

Figures vary

81 kgAnAgeAnAge build 15, 2023-07-03 (HAGR)data quality: high

Body length

1.59 m

COMBINE

Details ↓

Source: COMBINE · v1 (Soria et al. 2021) · CC BY 4.0

Shoulder height

0.71 m0.68–0.75 m · typical range

Details ↓

Sex not specified in source; value is the midpoint of the published range.

Source: Seymour 1989, Mammalian Species 340, p.1 · see citation

Bite force

1,014 N

Details ↓

Canine bite modelled by the dry-skull method (Thomason 1991) from a prepared skull; static bite at the canines, gape not stated. Not a live measurement. The skull's estimated body mass was 83.2 kg. The reassuring case: an independent muscle-cross-section model gives 945 N at the canine (Deutsch et al. 2025, Anat Rec 308:2944), within 7% of this figure. Highest bite-force quotient of any big cat here, which fits an animal that kills by biting through skulls and turtle shells.

Source: Wroe, McHenry & Thomason 2005, Proc R Soc B 272:619, Table 1 · see citation

Bite force for its size

137

Details ↓

Bite force normalised for body mass: the residual of canine bite force regressed on body mass, average across the sample set to 100. Above 100 means the animal bites harder than its size predicts. Do not cross-check against Wikipedia's BFQ table, which silently mixes this paper with Christiansen & Wroe 2007 and cites a popular-science book.

Source: Wroe, McHenry & Thomason 2005, Proc R Soc B 272:619, Table 1 · see citation

Brain mass

156 g

COMBINE

Details ↓

Source: COMBINE · v1 (Soria et al. 2021) · CC BY 4.0

Maximum lifespan

28 years

COMBINE

Other figures ↓

Source: COMBINE · v1 (Soria et al. 2021) · CC BY 4.0