Nick Garbutt was leading a photography trip in the tropical wetlands and flooded savannas of Brazil’s Pantanal area when he found a dark shadow in the brush. It was a jaguar, and the feline was stalking a household of capybaras chomping plants at the edge of the Paraguay River. Jaguars are nimble swimmers and have actually been understood to prey on turtles, crocodiles, and even dolphins, one of their preferred foods is capybara– the world’s biggest rodent, about the size of a mature gray wolf.
In locations like the Pantanal where jaguar populations are especially thick, capybaras tend to stick near rivers and other bodies of water. Despite the fact that jaguars do not mind getting damp, capybaras have a higher opportunity of swimming to security than scooting away on land. The semi-aquatic rodents have actually webbed feet to move them through water, and– as German explorer Hans Staden explained in 1557–“when anything alarms them, they run away into the water towards the bottom.” Capybaras can hold their breath for as much as 5 minutes, and are so well adjusted to their liquid environment that they’ve been shot trotting along river bottoms.
Capybaras’ eyes, ears, and nose are all set down high up on their heads,