The Turtle and The Jaguars

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This time he found him in a clear spot in the forest. As the jaguar came closer, the turtle told him that a great breeze was on its way. The turtle told the jaguar to wait there while he was going to get some rope. He came back with the rope and tied the jaguar to the tree first.

When came his turn, the turtle instead slowly walked away from the jaguar, leaving him to die there. The jaguars did not believe the turtle and continued to threaten her. So he started making the chant of the chacalla, a little bird that is known for responding when hearing the sound of its peers.

And everywhere, the chacallas started to respond to the call of the turtle. Upon hearing this, the jaguars ran away as fast as they could, ignoring that it was another trick from the turtle. As the turtle seemed to be getting much faster and smarter, the jaguars came back with hunting dogs, hoping to make a great meal of the shelled animal.

But when they found it, the turtle jumped into a hole, away from their reach. The hunters asked a Cara Cara bird to watch the hole as they were going to cut some sticks to dig out the turtle. Hearing that they had left, the turtle pulled out her head and saw the bird watching the hole.

Well if you are, please look at me really good and open your eyes very wide! As the blind bird was trying to clear his eyes from the sand, the turtle got out of the hole and walked away. Once again, the turtle had defeated the jaguars.

One jaguar continued to hunt the turtle and found him eating what seemed like a fruit. When seeing the jaguar, the turtle held on one of his testicles. The jaguar asked the turtle what he was eating.

Jaguars preying on green sea turtles creates conservation headache in Costa Rica

The jaguar accepted and tasted the fruit, which was really good. The turtle then turned to the jaguar and asked him if he could taste his testicle too. Many surveys were carried out, with only three months missed over the five year period. With an average of three surveys per month a huge total of dead turtles were found. There were only four "non-green" turtles.

» Jaguars Increase Their Take of Green Turtles at Tortuguero

For each survey, the kills rose from 5 over the five years. Most were in the central area as there is a small town to the north and a plantation and a ranch in the south. Jaguar predation on other prey needs to be studied just as the actual number of jaguars. Elsewhere, in Nicaragua for example, people eat the turtles, but here the large numbers of turtles' nests have been attacked by feral dogs.

Perhaps the influence of people on jaguar occurrence to the north and south could be brought to bear on the central area. Government and local communities, foreign donors and conservation managers need to understand how the destruction of the jaguars' habitat has influenced the dilemma they now find themselves in. If not then not one, but two conservation programmes could be at risk. How can you describe the threats existing to species, both large and small?

Using the highly-threatened primates, we can perhaps see how they have contrived to exist until the current time. Then we can better understand just how we can prevent factors simply wiping them from the face of the earth, often through ignorance, lack of care, prejudice and of course the universal profit motive.

Conservation begins in our minds, but demands much more than that. What does that blue butterfly do when you are not watching. Jaguars killing green turtles are part of the natural process of predator and prey and CCC is not doing anything to limit the turtle kills. We have to remember that one of the important ecological functions that sea turtles fill is to move energy from marine habitats to beaches and the adjacent forests. The green turtles that are eaten by jaguars provide an energy flow between sea grass beds and the tropical rainforest.

When we consider how rare the predator-prey relationship is between endangered green turtles and threatened jaguars, we have to study it in detail. CCC researchers recently published an account of the observations made on turtles killed by jaguars at Tortuguero, , in the scientific journal Chelonian Conservation and Biology.

Since then, track surveyor Eddy Rankin has continued to record the number and location of the killed turtles. Damien Hussy, a French research assistant with the green turtle program, went on extensive walks to record jaguar tracks and concluded that at least two jaguars are walking the beach in pursuit of their carapaced prey. Recently, we have also started to take photos of the jaguar tracks and we are forwarding them to Wildlife Conservation Society jaguar expert, Carolyn Miller in Belize, for analysis.

The effort is part of a regional initiative to determine if individual jaguars can be identified from their tracks. In the future, we are also hoping to be able to study the jaguars in more detail using camera traps. We think that several hypothetical factors may be involved in causing the increase in jaguar predation on nesting sea turtles at Tortuguero: The jaguar population may have increased in recent years as a result of enforcement of protective legislation in Tortuguero National Park; Deforestation for agriculture and cattle ranching, inland from Tortuguero, may be pushing jaguars toward the coast where more intact forest and suitable jaguar habitat remain; Possibly a decline in population of other prey may have left the jaguars with less prey options and increased pressures on sea turtles; It could also be a female jaguar that has taught her cubs to feed on the nesting turtles.

Jaguars are known to be opportunistic hunters and it would not be strange if this was the case.