{"id":138699,"date":"2025-09-15T10:50:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T10:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/138699\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T10:50:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T10:50:11","slug":"camera-trap-hidden-deep-in-amazon-rainforest-captures-elusive-predators-doing-something-never-filmed-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/138699\/","title":{"rendered":"Camera trap hidden deep in Amazon Rainforest captures elusive predators doing something never filmed before"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have recorded what they believe to be the first wild footage of courtship and mating in one of the world\u2019s most elusive and mysterious predators.<\/p>\n

The black panther<\/a> is an almost mythical beast. This all-black form of the jaguar<\/a> \u2013 the biggest cat in the Americas \u2013 has lent its name to Marvel superheroes, political movements, footballers, wrestlers and even notorious murderers. And yet most of our knowledge of its social behaviour comes from studies of captive animals.<\/p>\n

Ninety per cent of jaguars are sandy-coloured with black and orange rosettes, but the rest possess a variant of a single gene that leads to an abundance of a dark pigment called melanin in the skin and fur. <\/p>\n

There is evidence that these melanistic animals are better camouflaged<\/a> for hunting in forests during the day, while spotted individuals tend to be more nocturnal and occupy more open habitats. Melanism may also come with a cost, though. Black jaguars lack the white ear-spots of spotted individuals that are thought to play a role in visual communication.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But on the evidence of the new footage, recorded by a camera trap set up in Brazil\u2019s Serra do Pardo National Park, the lack of ear-spots may not be a significant barrier to a fruitful love-life. Because it shows courtship and copulation between a melanistic female and a spotted male jaguar.<\/p>\n

Camera trap captures melanistic jaguar mating with spotted jaguar in Brazil. Credit: Amazon Biodiversity and Carbon Expeditions<\/p>\n

\u201cThe behaviours we observed looked very similar to what\u2019s been described for spotted pairs in captivity,\u201d says Thomas Luypaert of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, who was first author of the research paper published in the journal\u00a0Ecology and Evolution<\/a>. “We saw the classic sequence of jaguar courtship: the female signalling readiness, the male mounting, nape-biting and licking, vocalisations, and female rolling.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, it\u2019s just a single observation, but it suggests that the visual differences of melanistic jaguars may not strongly affect mating behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Intriguingly, the melanistic female in the video has swollen nipples, which suggests she is lactating to a litter of cubs. If so, she is unlikely to be in oestrus. Luypaert and his colleagues suspect she is employing a \u2018hide-and-flirt\u2019 strategy, in which she conceals her litter and mates with males to confuse them about the paternity of her cubs in order to protect them from male aggression.<\/p>\n

Edu Fragoso, who works on jaguars with the Brazilian NGO On\u00e7afari and was not involved in the research, describes the study as a \u201cpioneering publication\u201d, adding that it was \u201cvery lucky that the animals stopped and displayed the mating behaviours right in front of the camera trap.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he points out that the footage is not the first to capture a melanistic jaguar mating. His own camera-traps recorded a similar event in 2022.<\/p>\n

More amazing wildlife stories from around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have recorded what they believe to be the first wild footage of courtship and mating in one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-138699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}