Comments on: Arizona Tragedy: Jaguar Update

By: Spinach Village

Spinach Village — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:17:11 +0000

Wow… serious bummer.
I seriously hope that this tragedy happened in an honest, good intentioned way.

If I find out that politics were involved in any shape or form, that will make me extremely upset.

I hope there are at least 1 or 2 younger Jags waiting to fill in this guys territory.

By: kittenz

kittenz — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:16:30 +0000

Endroren,

That’s true. Even under the supervision of veterinarians in a hospital, anesthesia is not to be taken lightly. Some of the most common anesthetics, that are routinely used to knock animals out for dental cleaning, grooming, and so forth, can cause problems or even occasionally cause fatalities. These complications can occur immediately, or up to several days after the animal has gone home.

In the field, without the resources of a veterinary hospital to fall back on, anesthesia is especially capricious. We don’t hear a lot about the animals that die from being “tranked”. But deaths occur.

By: Endroren

Endroren — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:03:25 +0000

It’s definitely tragic. One important thing it points out is that the idea of “just tranq it!” for dealing with wild animals is not anywhere near as simple as it seems.

By: kittenz

kittenz — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:08:23 +0000

My intuition (well, an educated guess anyway) tells me that the people who initially captured Macho B drew blood & tissue samples for testing at that time. The results may have been reasonably normal, considering that the cat was stressed from being anesthetized and captured. He may have suddenly gone into kidney failure, especially if the area was hot and he could not quickly get to a shady area to cool down. Kidney failure is usually irreversible in older cats, and he was very old for a wild jaguar.

Or maybe he already had kidney problems, maybe had been in a gradual decline, and the capture and release under anesthesia may have accelerated that decline. In that case the researchers probably realized that he was sick, after examining his labwork.

Kidney failure is one of the most common deaths in older cats. Even with access to the best modern veterinary care and medicine, it’s touch and go whether a cat will survive. Allowing him to just go off and die miserably, given that capture probably hastened his end, would have been terribly cruel, because kidney failure is a bad death for cats; it makes them unrelievably nauseous and miserable.

Possibly he was in kidney failure already and would have died anyway. Who knows? I doubt it; I think the anethesia, capture, and release brought out the kidney disease. The jaguar was about 3 yrs. old when first photographed, and he was photographed for 13 yrs. So at age 16, he was a pretty old jaguar. No one know for sure how long jaguars live in the wild, but 16 is pretty old for any cat. I’d be hesitant to use most anesthetics on a cat that age, without a lab workup first, to check kidney and liver function, among other things.

Maybe they jumped the gun going after this jaguar so abruptly. After all, they were actually doing a field study of pumas and black bears. I can understand wanting to grab the opportunity to collar a jaguar, but in their haste they might have brought about his death.

By: Quakerhead

Quakerhead — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:06:11 +0000

This is indeed a tragedy but I wouldn’t be one to rush to judgement. I don’t recall hearing anything about the estimated age of the jaguar or if it’s age could be a factor in the kidney failure. Also, wild animals tend to mask any symptoms of illness until they reach the “point of no return”. This is a well known method of defense so that they’ll look less vulnerable to predators (even other predators who might want to move in on the territory). A jaguar in a zoo will be closely monitored on a daily basis and most modern zoos have a veterinarian and vet. facility on property to take care of situations like this. A jaguar in the wild, of course, doesn’t have this luxury. Also, Big cats in a modern zoo setting tend to live twice as long, on average, than cats in the wild. In short, the jaguar could have had health issues all along and no one would have known.

By: DWA

DWA — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:02:26 +0000

“It was initially traveling more than three miles a day. However, more recent data showed it cutting back on its movements and a reduced amount of foraging over the past three days.

“Officials said it was not immediately known if the capture of the jaguar was a factor in its kidney failure.”

Ok, just asking.

But, if you are not absolutely certain that it will die if you don’t …why recapture it? Why not let nature take its course?

Could not this animal have been reducing foraging behaviour and cutting back on its movements as a way of…well, kicking back?

If the cat suffered kidney failure – and they don’t even know whether the capture had a role – what the heck else would they have wanted to put it through that hazardous procedure AGAIN for…?

[sigh...]