Peter and Sapeca love camera lenses. But the pieces don’t last long in their claws.
The jaguar Peter, on a morning in January of this year, was attracted by a small rectangular box near the base of a tree. He approached, investigated, and began to “play” with the box and the camera inside—which would not survive the feline attention.
At another time, this evening, another prey was spotted by Peter. He threw himself to the ground and, with claws and teeth —which are part of the most powerful bite among cats— he plucked another camera from the trunk of the tree and chewed it while still lying down.
Not satisfied, he looked around, among the trees of the Iguaçu National Park, the largest place with one of the main jaguar populations in the Atlantic Forest, and found a possible next victim. He approached and the video was interrupted.
There are already five cameras in Peter’s —somewhat destroyed— collection.
Sapeca, also with a filmic appetite, threw himself on the ground next to a tree with a camera and, with his big paws, made a show, face up.
“I had never seen this habit of destroying cameras,” says Felipe Feliciani, conservation analyst at WWF-Brasil, who highlights Peter’s dedication to destroying the machines.
According to Feliciani, when entering the forest to install camera traps or change the memory cards of the cameras, researchers avoid using creams and perfumes precisely to avoid smelling as much as possible.
There is no explanation for the taste of these two ounces for cameras, especially considering that the machinery in question is already thought to be discreet, with no emission, in general, of glare or noise. The idea behind the cameras is to get documentation of animals with the least amount of interference possible. They are normally activated by motion in their field of observation and can remain recording for a certain amount of time material that can later be used for studies.
“It’s not strange records of the animal sniffing the cameras”, says Feliciani. “Some animals get attached and go to the last consequences.”
Each trap costs around R$ 2,500 and they are placed in pairs in the forest, according to the specialist.
A nice loss given by Peter, a name, however, with plenty of credit. The jaguar was named after Peter G. Crawshaw Jr., a leading researcher in the field of jaguars who died in April this year due to Covid.
The count of camera traps destroyed by jaguars doesn’t come close to the damage that is usually caused by hunters who steal or break cameras to, of course, not leave evidence.
Hunting, together with deforestation, trampling and territorial fragmentation, is one of the biggest threats to jaguar populations in the Iguaçu region. In the park, specifically, retaliatory hunting — to animals that, for example, ate an animal from a herd raised on nearby properties — is the greatest threat.
A recent case exemplifies how this type of incident can happen. In November, the jaguar Indira and her one-year-old cub Aritana, in a hunting exercise, ended up killing 174 of the 176 flamingos that lived in the Parque das Aves, next to the Iguaçu National Park.
The good news is that, as a result of awareness-raising work carried out by organizations such as the Onças do Iguaçu Project, in the numerous municipalities and farms around the park, the situation of the cats has improved, compared to what it was before, when it was imagined that the species would become extinct in the region.
Last Monday (29), international jaguar day, the new edition of the biannual census of jaguars in the Iguaçu region was launched, thanks to more than 200 camera traps scattered throughout the area —one of the possible uses of these remote cameras is the population estimate.
On the Brazilian side, an average of 24 individuals is estimated. In 2009, the estimate was only 11. Considering the more than 564,000 hectares of mapped forest, between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay (which for the first time is part of the monitoring), the jaguar population at the site is 76 to 106 animals (average of 90).
Although the number is considerably higher than the first records made (from 30 to 54 individuals), it represents a decrease compared to the 2018 census, which registered 84 to 125 specimens (average of 105).
“For such a small population, any animal that gets lost is very bad,” says Feliciani.
According to the WWF expert, the variation is small and does not necessarily represent an actual decrease. The population reduction will only be confirmed if the next census confirms the situation and returns to show fewer jaguars in Iguaçu. At that moment, it is considered that there is a stabilization of the animal population.
In any case, the situation is still far from comfortable. The survey area, according to Feliciani, could hold up to 250 ounces. If, in fact, there is a stabilization or decline in population, it will be necessary to understand what happened to the brake on growth.
Jaguars are in the vulnerable category, according to the ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation) Red Book Classification of Threatened Species.
But, in the Atlantic Forest, the situation of the species is considered critically endangered, the classification prior to extinction.
Tracks
If you’ve come this far and are wondering how researchers know that Peter, and not another jaguar interested in photography, is responsible for the destruction of the cameras, the answer lies in the clues. Or rather, in the spots.
Each jaguar has a unique pattern of skin markings, known as rosettes (in the case of jaguars, the spots are circular and have one or more dark spots in the center), which makes it easy to identify the pussies.
Long live Peter.
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