26 thoughts on “Swimming jaguar”

  1. Those big paws really push it along, and it seems surprisingly at ease in the water.

    1. I am afraid that you have been misled: that is clearly the Loch Ness monster. Did you not notice the hump a couple of metres behind the head? 🙂

      1. Nessie’s hump is several hundred metres from it’s head – on the shoulders of the local hotel owner who feels his income threatened by dispute of the reality of Nessie.

    1. It sounds like three different languages to me (English from 0:34 to 1:03, perhaps Swahili before that, don’t know what after).

  5. Impressive. No fear of water from this cat. Maybe I will throw some salmon in the bathtub tonight for my kitties and see if they go for it…not in a million years.

  6. We were in Brazil last August visiting the Pantanal at a hotel at Porto Jofre on the Cuiaba River. Our group was out on a boat looking for birds and jaguars when we received a call locating one of the cats. She was stalking along the edge of the stream and sat down about 30 feet from us. Suddenly it launched itself at us landing less than 10 feet from me. It was after a caiman hidden in the weeds. She missed, thenswam back ashore and walked off. After the event, our guide asked if any of us needed toilet paper.

    2. I wonder what they mean by “most big cats” though. Certainly through south-east Asia the big cat species don’t seem to mind the water at all. Maybe there’s a list somewhere of how various big cats behave around water.

  8. Right at the end of the video, the cat sees something that frightens it. The claws go out and it races to the surface. Weird.

  10. Awesome – I’ve only ever seen caged big cats swimming to get across water. I never thought that they might dive for food as well.

  11. On cats and water.

    Decades ago we were acquired by two littermates. Toms through and through, they were true barn kitties — preferring to hunt the wilds of the barns or fields near our rural home to the comforts of domestication.

    The only time we insisted they come inside was when it was raining. More for our comfort knowing they were safe and dry than for their’s. When rain would threaten or fall we would open the door and call for them to come in. And in they would scamper to be dried with towels, given warm milk and lay by the fire.

    The lesson was well learned. When they grew older and more settled they spent more time inside with us. With one peculiar behavior: Whenever one of us was in the shower, the two would run to the bathroom and caterwaul until the bather turned off the water and emerged from the shower.

    It took us a while to realize they were calling us out of the “rain” to where it was safe and dry.

  12. Wow! I had no idea! It was not only retrieving the noms but sometimes actually eating them underwater as well! And, boy, could s/he hold his/her breath!

  13. Very graceful. I was particularly impressed by the long dive in the first minute. That best demonstrated what they could do.

    It makes sense they’d be at home in water, considering they must live in countries with high tropical rainfall and regular floods. Flooding is a hunting opportunity for them.

  14. I used to work at a factory that had a small river running through the site. I watched from my office as a cat, pursued by a larger one, deliberately jumped off a footbridge and swam away downstream to escape. While it was presumably relying on cats’ general dislike of water as a deterrence to the bully, it actually swam pretty well.

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