Research overview: dietary breadth in jaguars across the Neotropics

Jaguars have one of the most diverse diets of any big cat, recorded preying on dozens of species. This overview synthesizes scat and kill studies documenting how jaguar diet ranges from large mammals such as peccaries, deer, and tapir to reptiles including caiman and turtles, fish, and smaller prey like armadillos and agoutis. It reviews how diet composition shifts with habitat, with aquatic prey dominating in wetlands and terrestrial mammals in forests, and how prey size relates to jaguar body size, which itself varies across the range. The synthesis frames the jaguar as a flexible generalist whose local diet reflects available prey. For enthusiasts it explains the remarkable range of animals a jaguar can tackle, from caiman to capybara to peccary, and how this dietary versatility underlies the cat's broad distribution across diverse Neotropical environments.