Ethos of the Jaguar
Ethos: a Greek word to describe guiding characteristics that build a ‘way of life’, generally influencing emotions, behaviours and even morals. Now, depending on your thoughts on how clever jaguars may be and how sophisticated their brains have developed, the word ethos usually isn’t linked to animals, especially regarding the ‘moral’ aspect of the word’s meaning.
However, as animal behaviour students (Graduates! We are graduates now, wow), we like the sound of the word, perhaps it’s a good way to sum up what we have researched in the past, that is how a species acts i.e responding to stimuli or interacting with its kin. But, especially, how we feel when we think of the animal, obviously this is very culturally influenced and subjective but still fun to think about and delve into, here are some examples of what I mean;
When we think of African elephants some immediate words that come to mind are ‘wise’ and ‘caring’ and maybe now more than ever I would think of their vulnerability as a species. On the other hand certain snakes might ring home feelings of uncertainty over safety, perhaps eliciting fear or a sense of danger, this can definitely be linked to different forms of media, think of films such as Anaconda or Jungle Book using a snake as a villain, or a fear tactic, lets not even mention the 2006 cult classic adventure ‘Snakes on a plane’.
Of course, this isn’t the case, I know you’re thinking that Olly! Many animals get a bad rep but its interesting to think why, on one hand you have things like movies and tv shows portraying animal characters but on the other hand, they’ve built these characters on databases of what we know of these animals, in terms of the natural behaviours of the animals, we clearly build an understanding from observing them, we should know, its what we did for 3 years.
Predators vs prey, that’s where it lies, we see snakes constricting their prey, inflicting terrible bites and injecting venom through incredible fangs. Whereas we often see elephants in the kinder way I suggested earlier as much more of their time is spent surrounded by family as the female members of the group rear their calves over many years remaining close together and highly social. Some things that we studied in detail, but never in respect to how we as people see our animal neighbours, there is many more ways you can take this, we are more likely to see human emotions and relate to mammals. So, to fuse the ideas surrounding deadly predators and mammals, lets look at the South American powerhouse, the jaguar.
I was able to photograph the wonderful Jaguars at Chester Zoo, and while I was there I couldn’t help but think how amazing this creature was, the size of her paws, the muscles that shone through her majestic skin patterns, ginormous canines poking through a truly bone crushing mouth, all this yet she lay flat on her back, right on the other side of the glass, legs up in the air! The fierce predator was looking more like a house cat on a lazy Sunday than a sinister hunter of the jungle. To put it simply, this was one of the cutest animals I’ve ever seen, I felt everything I would feel for a cuddly prey species, potentially due to a shared vulnerability or susceptibility that originates from a.) the helpless nature of a prey species such as a rabbit, against b.) the endangered status that we hear about for animals such as the jaguar, we can’t hate an animal we are slowly killing off, especially when you see how cute they are, straight chilling at Chester zoo.
So, beyond this, what has been built on our view of Jaguars? We almost respect them, feel sorry for them in some ways due to the effects of other people, we may fear them due to their arsenal of weapons and capabilities… but I think we are mostly in awe of them, in amazement of not just their beauty but exactly what builds up their supposed ‘ethos’ being the character we build in our head for a jaguar, a majestic huntress of the jungle, a fearless warrior when they need to be, but a strong and level headed type that certainly knows how to sleep!
- Toby