The jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) seems to lack distinction, at least to human eyes. It doesn’t have spots or stripes. It’s not an exceptional climber. It’s not endangered, or endemic to any one region. At 4-7 kilograms (9-16 pounds), it’s neither the biggest cat in the Americas, nor the smallest, nor even the biggest of the small cats.
In fact, with its small head, round pupils, tiny round ears, sleek body and audaciously long tail, it doesn’t even look all that much like a cat. “Some people say it looks more like an otter,” says Arturo Caso, president of Predator Conservation, who, for his Ph.D. research, conducted one of the very few radio-collar studies of jaguarundi. “It’s — how can I say — not very attractive!”
Yet researchers all across the jaguarundi’s range, stretching from Mexico to northern Argentina, are captivated by the animal. “They’re a bit of a puzzle, a little bit of an enigma,” says Anthony Giordano, director of S.P.E.C.I.E.S., a carnivore conservation nonprofit. They are distinct in “how they relate to other cats — their behavior, where they sit ecologically in the food chain … how they’ve been shaped by evolutionary forces.”
Elusive daytime hunter
Like most small cats, the jaguarundi blends in well with its wild surroundings. Slightly larger than a domestic cat, its coat can be plain chocolate brown, silvery tan, russet red — or somewhere in between — with different color morphs even found in the same litter. It’s relatively slight of build, with an elongated body that’s sinewy and low to the ground, allowing it to move through dense underbrush. Unlike most felids, it’s most active during daylight.
These adaptations have allowed the jaguarundi to carve out a unique niche, living among, but avoiding, other physically stronger predators, Giordano says. It’s a strategy that works well; the jaguarundi is the most widely distributed Latin American small cat, and of all neotropical cats, is second in distribution only to the puma (Puma concolor), its closest relative.
Despite being more regularly sighted than some of the nocturnal cats, and sparking the curiosity of many cat researchers, the jaguarundi remains among the world’s least studied wildcats, for a number of reasons.
First, it’s notoriously difficult to trap, making satellite- or radio-collaring studies impractical. Caso says it took him more than a year to trap the first two jaguarundi for his radio-collar research in Tamaulipes, Mexico.
Second, because the jaguarundi has a plain coat without markings, researchers can’t easily identify individuals, making density estimates using camera trapping more difficult and much less accurate.
Finally, the species’ conservation status is currently classified as being of least concern by the IUCN (though an updated assessment is currently underway). So when it comes to funding, the species ranks far below its more threatened peers.
“To be clear, you will never convince anyone to give you money to study the jaguarundi,” Giordano says.
New ways to study
Like many biologists, Bart Harmsen came to Latin America to study jaguars (Panthera onca), but he soon also became smitten by the odd-looking little cat he sometimes glimpsed during the day.
“I can still remember seeing one crossing a highway in Belize,” Harmsen recalls. The jaguarundi jumped down off the bank, bounded over the road in a single giant leap, then disappeared into the forest on the other side.
“And it’s just sort of like these flashes!” says Harmsen, his hands tracing arcs in the air. “They’re just these unknown fascinating cats.” Now director of the Belize program for the wildcat NGO Panthera, Harmsen has been working on large and small cat conservation for more than 20 years, and he’s still fascinated.
While his research focuses on larger felid species, he’s always kept an eye out for the jaguarundi. But while his camera traps were picking up jaguars, pumas, margays (Leopardus wiedii), ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) and other species, the jaguarundi remained rare. The same thing was happening to other scientists. “You talk to any researcher, they always say ‘jaguarundis, of all the carnivores, they’re always my lowest one, just get a few [photo] captures,’” he says.
Harmsen became convinced that was because they were scarce almost everywhere. But with relatively few camera-trapping records from Panthera’s Belize study sites, he didn’t have enough data points to understand fully what was going on. “So, I always had this thought, like, at one point, everybody needs to get their three captures in one bucket, so that we can say something [conclusive],” he remembers.
His interest in the jaguarundi bloomed into a major collaborative effort, with the contribution of sightings coming from a variety of researchers at 17 institutions working in 13 countries. They put together 884 records of jaguarundis from nearly 4,000 cameras at more than 650 sites. Harmsen and colleagues then poured that data into modeling software and looked at the results.
The study, published in Diversity and Distributions in April, showed that the jaguarundi was more likely to be found in rugged terrain with shrubby vegetation or close to rural areas near people, and in places where rainfall and daily temperatures were more constant.
Using these variables, the scientist developed a predictive map, showing the probability of the jaguarundi occurring across Latin America. For example, most of Central America, the northern Andes and parts of Paraguay were predicted to have a higher chance of having jaguarundis. On the other hand, large swaths of the Amazonian lowlands and the central Andes had a low probability of being occupied by the species. From this predictive map, the researchers were able to come up with a crude population estimate, totaling between 35,000 and 230,000 individuals across their range. Spread out over nearly all of Latin America, that isn’t so many.
Harmsen says the modeling work was challenging, partly because the jaguarundi appears to be a generalist and doesn’t reveal a strong preference for any specific habitat variables.
Still, Harmsen suggests that the new research is an important first step toward getting to know the jaguarundi, providing an initial indication of its distribution and approximate population size, all of which can be refined as more data become available.
Utilizing camera trap ‘bycatch’
Camera trapping is now a standard tool for researching threatened species like jaguars — but camera traps also capture images of many other species not targeted by those studies, generating what’s called “bycatch” data.
This bycatch data can be hard for researchers to utilize. First, a single study may not have enough data points to draw conclusion, as already noted. Second, for lower-profile species that aren’t threatened, researchers may not have the time or funding to do the analysis. This means that bycatch data often ends up sitting on a virtual shelf collecting dust.
But, as this new study shows, when numerous researchers pool those meager data points, very useful findings can arise. Harmsen says the jaguarundi, a much loved but not widely known cat that isn’t on any funder’s list, was the perfect species to chart the way.
He says he hopes the success achieved by his team’s novel collaborative approach to studying the jaguarundi will serve as an example for scientists needing to stretch limited research dollars to learn more about other less charismatic species.
Throwing a wide net for data
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the world’s most complete source of information on the conservation status of animals, plants and fungi. Experts evaluate each species using criteria such as population size and trends, distribution, threats and more, then assign a global status ranging from least concern to endangered to extinct.
The IUCN aims to update each species’ status at least every 10 years. Assessments are done by a core team of invited experts, and can take between one and two years to complete, writes Tabea Lanz, Red List Authority coordinator for the IUCN’s Cat Specialist Group.
The jaguarundi is one species whose status is currently undergoing an IUCN reassessment. But as already noted, the task of researching lesser-known, elusive, wide-ranging species can be daunting. So the assessment team is trying out new cooperative approaches to evaluating this little cat. To get around some of the data collection difficulties, the assessment team developed a participatory approach that casts a wide net in search of information.
That includes sending out a Google Forms questionnaire to a wide network of researchers, government institutions and NGOs, while also designing social media posts in three languages that can be shared easily.
This approach helped the assessment team collect diverse perspectives — some importantly from outside the Global North — says assessment team member Mariam Weston-Flores, coordinator of the Ocelot Working Group.
In the end, 69 individuals and organizations from 18 countries answered the jaguarundi questionnaire and sent in contributions; a stunning 70% of the data collected were from previously unpublished sources.
Weston-Flores says it was heartening to see how enthusiastically the research community responded.
“People really trusted us, they sent their recordings, even their thesis materials,” Weston-Flores says. “You cannot assess something if you don’t have the data, so it was a good way to grab that data.”
The invisible threat
The results of the latest IUCN assessment won’t be out until later this year, but Tadeu de Oliveira, a professor at Maranhão State University in Brazil and co-founder of the Wild Cats Americas Conservation Project, says that the jaguarundi faces multiple threats. He calls the species the “neglected kid in the family,” and emphasizes that it deserves urgent attention.
De Oliveira, whose research focuses on small cats, is particularly concerned about what he calls the “invisible threat” of disease transmission from domestic dogs.
In his study sites across the Amazon and the semiarid Caatinga, he has observed large numbers of domestic and feral dogs using the same areas as wild felids, including the jaguarundi.
De Oliveira saw a high prevalence of neurological signs of canine distemper virus among dogs near Mirador State Park, Brazil, and concluded that disease is one of the primary threats to the northern tiger cat (Leopardus tigrinus). He says it’s likely the jaguarundi is being similarly affected.
Chicken killers
Cats are opportunistic predators, and for many the sight of a coop full of chickens is a hard-to-resist temptation. But unlike other predators that sneak in under the cover of darkness, the jaguarundi hunts during the day. So it’s more likely to get caught, says José Daniel Ramírez-Fernández, formerly the oncilla conservation coordinator with the Costa Rica Wildlife Foundation. That leads to conflict problems.
In some places, people kill the jaguarundi in retaliation; or, because many Costa Ricans are conservation minded, they may instead give up keeping chickens altogether, forgoing on an important nutrition source, says Ramírez-Fernández. Neither outcome is ideal, so he and his colleagues are working with local communities to install predator-proof chicken coops.
Weston-Flores is involved with similar programs in Mexico, and says that finding solutions to chicken predation, no matter what the cause, benefits a range of species and improves people’s attitudes toward wildlife.
“You need to attend the issue, right? It doesn’t matter if it’s … a raccoon or a wildcat,” she says. “The solution is building trust, so you can modify [people’s] behaviors.”
A species beyond the conservation umbrella
Like species the world over, the jaguarundi is threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation. But unlike flagship species such as the jaguar, the jaguarundi doesn’t necessarily need large areas of pristine habitat to thrive.
Though it needs natural habitat, H. yagouaroundi also seems to have found a place at the margins, hunting for rodents, birds or reptiles at the forest edge, or in the patchwork of forest, dense undergrowth and small fields where wildlands and human settlements meet.
But as small farms are swallowed up by larger farms or by industrial agriculture, that “messy kind of mosaic” is being lost, Harmsen says.
Experts are concerned that umbrella species like the jaguar (a charismatic big cat that confers protection on other species via its similar habitat requirements) may not be adequately sheltering the jaguarundi across all of its range. That’s because jaguarundi conservation likely requires protection outside of preserves, in areas that aren’t a high conservation priority.
In addition, connecting habitat patches via wildlife corridors could be key to allowing the small cat roaming space, and helping the species maintain its genetic resilience, de Oliveira says.
No ‘one size fits all’ for jaguarundi research
Giordano cautions that scientists don’t necessarily have enough information to understand the jaguarundi’s total conservation needs, and thinks that methods used to study other species may not work.
He saw jaguarundis numerous times while conducting research in Paraguay. That got him thinking about how the cats use the landscape, and how scientists might better study them. Laying camera traps on trails and roads in a rough grid is an effective way to study jaguars or ocelots, but probably not jaguarundis, he says.
“Camera traps are really only effective tools for studying species if you can put them out in a way that’s meaningful to the ecology of the species,” he explains.
For the jaguarundi, that might mean laying cameras in brushy clearings, or finding ways to collect genetic material. The problem, as with all small wildcats, is that all this takes funding.
“It’s like an underdog,” says Weston-Flores. “Just assuming that they will be preserved because we have … preserved the forest might not be the best conservation tool for this species … One of the things that [we] saw [during the IUCN assessment] was this echo of, ‘yes, jaguarundi are not well known, and they need more attention’.”
Citations:
Fox-Rosales, L. A., & de Oliveira, T. G. (2023). Interspecific patterns of small cats in an intraguild-killer free area of the threatened Caatinga drylands, Brazil. PLOS ONE, 18(4), e0284850. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0284850
Fox-Rosales, L. A., & de Oliveira, T. G. (2022). Habitat use patterns and conservation of small carnivores in a human-dominated landscape of the semiarid Caatinga in Brazil. Mammalian Biology, 102(2), 465-475. doi:10.1007/s42991-022-00245-3
Harmsen, B. J., Williams, S., Abarca, M., Álvarez Calderón, F. S., Araya‐Gamboa, D., Avila, H. D., … Robinson, H. (2024). Estimating species distribution from camera trap by‐catch data, using jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) as an example. Diversity and Distributions, e13831. doi:10.1111/ddi.13831
De Oliveira, T. G., Lima, B. C., Fox-Rosales, L., Pereira, R. S., Pontes-Araújo, E., & de Sousa, A. L. (2020). A refined population and conservation assessment of the elusive and endangered northern tiger cat (Leopardus tigrinus) in its key worldwide conservation area in Brazil. Global Ecology and Conservation, 22, e00927. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e00927
This article by Ruth Kamnitzer was first published by Mongabay.com on 30 May 2024. Lead Image: Unlike most other felids, the jaguarundi is active during the day. Image by thibaudaronson via iNaturalist (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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