Camera traps in Brazil’s Iguaçu National Park reportedly recorded jaguars making calls that sound like domestic-cat meows. Researchers say the sounds may help jaguars locate cubs or find mates, but those possible functions have not been confirmed.
What did the camera traps catch in Brazil?
A February 25, 2026 report by Indian Defence Review describes jaguars making meow-like vocalizations in Iguaçu National Park. The report says the sounds were captured during long-term monitoring using 29 cameras spaced approximately 0.6 to 1.2 miles apart.
Dr. Marina Duarte, a research fellow at the University of Salford, told the publication that the calls could help jaguars locate their young. She also suggested they might be used for reproductive purposes, such as finding a mate. Those are hypotheses, not established explanations for the sounds.
Can jaguars really meow?
The report describes the recorded calls as strikingly similar to domestic-cat meows. That resemblance does not mean jaguars are making the same sound for the same reason as house cats, or that meowing is a common jaguar behavior. No independent statistic on how often jaguars make meow-like calls is established in the available reporting.
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Duarte called this, as far as the researchers knew, the first time jaguars had been recorded using this kind of communication. Because that first-recording claim appears in secondary reporting rather than a primary study available here, it should be treated as provisional—not as a settled scientific first.
How do camera traps help researchers study jaguars?
Camera traps let researchers observe wildlife without a person being present at the moment an animal passes. Set up across an area for extended monitoring, they can document animals’ presence and capture uncommon behavior that might otherwise go unseen. The Iguaçu cameras’ reported spacing and long-term use illustrate how a monitoring network can collect observations across a landscape rather than relying on a single encounter.
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Images and recordings can reveal what an animal did, when it appeared, and where it was detected. They do not, by themselves, establish why it behaved that way. For example, a camera may record a call, but researchers need further evidence to determine whether it was directed at cubs, a mate, or another animal.
What else have Brazilian camera traps revealed about jaguars?
Other projects in Brazil have documented courtship and a potentially long swim. The evidence and the questions each observation can answer differ:
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| Behavior | Location and observation | Evidence status | What it may tell researchers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Courtship and mating | Serra do Pardo National Park: a September 2025 report described a melanistic female and a spotted male. The recorded sequence included female signaling, mounting, nape-biting, licking, vocalizations, and the female rolling. | Discover Wildlife reported the footage on September 9, 2025. Researcher Thomas Luypaert said the behavior resembled captive observations; conservationist Edu Fragoso noted that his own camera traps had recorded a similar event in 2022. | The footage suggests that visible coat-pattern differences may not strongly affect mating behavior, but one recorded encounter cannot establish how jaguars generally choose mates. |
| Swimming | At Serra da Mesa, a male first photographed near a hydroelectric dam in May 2020 was recorded on an artificial-lake island in August 2024. Researchers estimated that the animal may have swum up to 1.54 miles (2.48 kilometers). | Live Science reported the case on September 18, 2025, citing a bioRxiv preprint that had not been peer reviewed at publication. The report compared the possible distance with a previously verified jaguar swim of about 200 meters. | The observation could extend the known distance jaguars may travel through water. Whether the male was exploring for females, seeking territory, or moving for another reason remains uncertain. |
What do large monitoring projects show about jaguars and human activity?
In Jamari National Forest, ICMBio researchers used 100 camera traps and processed nearly 300,000 images, detecting 78 species, according to the project page from Wildlife Insights. Jaguars were recorded throughout the forest, not only near its edges, and were detected almost exclusively outside normal human working hours.
That timing is consistent with jaguars being active when people are less present in a working forest. The project page says the pattern may reflect adaptation, but it does not resolve whether the timing is learned behavior or natural nocturnal activity amplified by a managed landscape.
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Project Jaguars of Iguaçu’s Vania Foster described the calls as a reminder of how much remains to be learned about jaguar interactions and communication in the wild. Together, these observations show why long-term, non-invasive monitoring matters: it can reveal rare behaviors and activity patterns, while leaving researchers to test what those observations mean.
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