EVERY year, thousands of turtles visit Tortuguero beach in Costa Rica to lay their eggs. When the baby turtles hatch, they are easy prey for dogs, seabirds and other animals, but nesting mothers attract bigger predators too.
The first case of a jaguar preying on turtles was reported here in 1981. Since then, reports have steadily increased, and now around 400 are killed by jaguars each year on this 29 kilometre stretch of coast. Ian Thomson and Stephanny Arroyo-Arce, who run the independent research project Coastal Jaguar Conservation, set up camera traps to study the behaviour. This image is one snap from such a trap.
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The hard shells pose little difficulty to the jaguars. They kill by biting and crushing the turtles’ heads. Then, they open up the neck and scoop out the internal organs with their paws.
Thomson and Arroyo-Arce have documented 40 individual jaguars on the beach since 2011. On occasions, they have seen multiple jaguars feeding on the same carcass. “For an animal typically described as territorial and solitary, we would consider that an unusual behaviour,” says Thomson.
Leatherback, hawksbill and loggerhead turtles all nest on this beach, but most of those killed by the jaguars are green turtles, an endangered species. Predation by jaguars isn’t a serious threat to their survival though: only 2 to 4 per cent of the nesting population is killed by the cats each year, and green turtle numbers are actually increasing int his area. Human activities like commercial fishing and illegal poaching are much more of an issue.
Photographer
Ian Thomson
Coastal Jaguar Conservation
This article appeared in print under the headline “Big cat’s seafood snack”
