Mother Jaguar Engages in Courtship to Shield Her Cub: A ‘Hide and Flirt’ Scheme Against ‘Infanticidal’ Males

Observers recently captured an image of a female jaguar hunting and playing with her five-month-old cub, and now, she was observed to be frolicking with a male jaguar, and no one had seen her offspring for some time.

A Science report said that when the young cat reappeared with its mother after a few days, Wildcat ecologist Diana Stasiukynas of Panthera, a big cat conservation philanthropy, realized she may have witnessed a "never-before-seen" anti-infanticide technique.

It was almost Valentine's Day in 2020 when a pair of the spotted gigantic cats tumbled in the grass, producing what this report describes as "throaty mating growls" through the grasses of Hato La Aurora Nature Reserve in the tropical savanna region of Columbia.

When Stasiukynas saw the tryst's videos, though, she expressed concern. Sometimes, male jaguars kill young cubs that are not their own to make with their mothers.

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(Photo: FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP via Getty Images)
A Leopard or Panthera pardus mother carries her cub in her mouth at the Capital Zoo in Islamabad.

The 'Hide and Flirt' Scheme

Such violence frees up a potential partner and may be eradicated as a future competitor, although it comes at a high cost to the females.

The encounter between sexes also happens to other big cats. Essentially, mother lions and pumas hide their young during sexual intercourse to avoid infanticide.

Such a strategy could trick numerous males into believing a young could be their own to discourage them from killing it. More so, a flirty experience might boost the male's perception of his sexual success, leaving him unlikely to commit infanticide because of depression.

Now, Stasiukynas and her colleagues have discovered that female jaguars are using the same "hide and flirt" scheme to shield their cubs against "infanticidal males," reported in a journal.

Mother Jaguar Engaging in Courtship Activities

After witnessing Valentine's Day tumble, Stasiukynas thoroughly explored the literature and discovered no reports of akin behavior in jaguars.

However, when she shared the story with colleagues in Brazil, she discovered that they had seen a nursing mother jaguar as well, engaging in courtship activities.

In two cases discovered in Colombia's Llanos and Brazil's Northern Pantanal, the mother jaguars reunited with their cubs after, World News Era said in a similar report.

Such observations are the first published instances of jaguars that use anti-infanticide strategies in the wild, explained Stasiuskynas.

To some observers, such courtship rituals are not highly romantic. Jaguar that flirts said the wildcat ecologist, is not soft.

Typically, this animal engages in a "precoital mock fight," during which the female jaguar bares her teeth, making "guttural vocalizations." Typically, a pair of jaguars spends two or three days sparring between short periods of sex.

How Cubs Fare in Their Mother's Absence

It remains unknown to researchers how the hidden cubs go through their days, a testament to their hiding abilities.

Florida panther kittens in the same situations can lose up to 20 percent of their body weight while their mother is attending to her suitors.

Nonetheless, jaguar dens are such well-kept secrets that experts have not known how cubs fare in their mother's absence or even how long they may remain hidden.

The new results published in the Acta Ethologica journal are important despite the small number of observations, according to researcher Ronaldo Morato, who, as the head of the National Predator Center at the Chico Mendes Institute Biodiversity Conservation, studies jaguar movement ecology.

He explained a need to concentrate initiatives to collect more of this kind of data about such species' natural history.

Information about mother leopard protecting her cubs from a male intruder is shown on Nature on PBS's YouTube video below:

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