Why Are Jaguars Endangered Animals? Free Essay Example

Many see Jaguars as a beautiful species, but only from far away. However, others see their beauty as more of a harmful way. Jaguars are considered endangered prey. Texas, California, New Mexico, Africa, and Asia are just a small variety of where Jaguars live. Jaguars have been an endangered species for many years, but the ones that are left aren’t being protected. The reasons for endangerment include hunting and cattle ranching.

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For over the last hundred years humans have been the main threat to Jaguars, due to hunting them for sport, for its spotted hide, and to protect their domestic stock.

The numbers of Jaguars have reduced rapidly due to humans slashing and burning many of the Jaguar’s homelands in Central and South Americas; cities being overpopulated, and forests being cleared out. Populated areas and attempting to hunt have made the population of Jaguars decrease because the destruction of logging and trying to compete with humans for food at the same time is destroying them so it’s hard to overcome.

Some of the problems that the Jaguars experience is when fog is causing the tall grass to die, which is what helps them hide, more of them are dying because they are prey to some animals as well.

Females have a litter of one to four cubs, when the cubs are born, they are blind and helpless. Most fathers of their babies go out and hunt while the mother stays and protects her babies, but Jaguars are different. The father will go out and hunt but usually only for him, while the mom stays and defends the cubs from any animal that may approach them.

After all, the father of the cubs might even be the one that may approach and hurt them so usually, the mom has to play not only her role in taking care of the cubs but also the father role as well. Therefore, males weigh from about 126 pounds to about 250 pounds while females weigh 100 pounds to about 200 pounds. With females weighing less, prey usually goes for the female Jaguars because from experience they know that females will drop quicker. As a result, hunters usually have a dog with them that will chase the Jaguars up the tree, then it is shot. Other animals mainly prey on female cats. So, this becomes a problem with extinction because the males cannot find a mate to reproduce.

Jaguars have become extinct not only due to hunting but also due to deforestation. Deforestation is when someone clears a big number of trees in an area. Deforestation is happening very frequently these days because the population of humans is increasing, which means the more the population increases the more land that we need. All of this causes habitat losses, along with pollution, it has wrecked global biodiversity. Biodiversity is affected by extinction and forming a new distinct species in the course of evolution. Jaguars are the largest and the most m cats in the Western Hemisphere and are also known as large carnivores. Large carnivores are affected because of the fear they have for humans, and simply just the difficulties of trying to prevent wasting a resource. In other words, they fear us. That is so sad to think that some things us humans are doing, such as cattle ranching, we are the ones that are making these beautiful harmless creatures go extinct.