Jaguar Cub Video Renews Calls to Respect Protected Wildlife

A viral video captured in Belize’s Mountain Pine Ridge is drawing sharp criticism from conservationists and animal lovers alike after a group of men was seen approaching, cornering, and touching a jaguar cub. While the encounter was shared online as a rare and exciting wildlife experience, experts warn that the actions seen in the footage could have placed both the animal and the men in grave danger. The incident has also renewed concerns about respecting protected wildlife and following responsible practices when encountering animals in their natural habitat. Jaguars are strictly protected under Belizean law, which mandates that wildlife be observed from a safe, respectful distance. Today, we spoke with Wildlife Ecologist, Dr. Celso Poot, Managing Director at the Belize Zoo, for more insight into how dangerous this situation was for the animals and the men interacting with them.

 

Dr. Celso Poot, Managing Director, Belize Zoo

“Even us as humans, if somebody do anything to our child, we react. And so a wild mother jaguar would do the same. They don’t differentiate from a human to another animal. They perceive that human as a threat. So one, the jaguar could respond in an aggressive behavior. But two, it’s the long-term physiologic- physiological stress it puts on the cub and the mom. So we in the zoo world and wildlife professionals go through a strict protocol when you handle wildlife, and especially this young cub. We estimate, based on our observation from jaguar cubs we’ve raised, that cub was between two weeks to a month old, so during one of its most vulnerable phase in life. There’s a thing we call capture myopathy, and this is how the animal respond when it is under severe stress. Basically, the animal die. We can’t say that happened to this cub, right? But it’s one of those long-term impact because it builds up a lot of stress hormones. The muscle lock up and over time that animal can be affected. It’s just like us humans. When, when we get frightened, when we have near-death experience, we freeze, we lock up, and it take us a time to recover. So when, when an adult person move on and capture and corner and separate a cub from its mom, that cub was through severe stress.”

 

Poot also dispelled the myth that touching a cub may lead to abandonment from the mother, however, he explains that a mother’s scent can protect the animal from predators and replacing it with a human’s may further put the cub at risk.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

Watch the full newscast here: