Original subtitles

I've spent much of my working life

trying to film big cats.

I've watched them in the wild

and analyzed the footage in the editing room,

which has given me a real insight into their behavior.

Today, we can see these amazing predators

on our screens any time we choose.

(dramatic music)

But until quite recently,

we knew practically nothing about them.

(dramatic music)

Big cats are normally shy and very secretive.

Today, their populations are shrinking fast,

but now we have the means to view them

in more detail than ever.

(dramatic music)

And learn the intricacies of their lives.

(dramatic music)

Which is just as well,

because we need to find ways of living alongside them

before they disappear forever.

(tense music)

My efforts to film jaguars began 25 years ago

in a place called Nancite Beach

on Costa Rica's Pacific coast.

When Nancite was included in a newly-created

Santa Rosa National Park in 1971,

jaguars were rarely seen here, if at all.

When I arrived to make a film about coatis,

I knew that it was technically possible

to see a jaguar and hoped to include it in the film.

Over a period of four months,

there wasn't so much as a footprint.

I now realize that the presence of coatis

and a pack of coyotes almost meant that

by definition, there were no jaguars here.

Incredibly, at the time,

there was very little research about jaguars.

Most of their behavior was a mystery.

The first jaguar scientists struggled

to go anywhere near their subjects.

But times have changed.

There are now a couple of places in the world where seeing

a wild jaguar is a possibility rather than a dream.

Recently, there were reports of jaguar footprints

on the beach here,

and of course, I had to visit.

(tense music)

The jaguar is one of the most illusive of all the cats.

Until 10 years ago, it was practically unfilmed in the wild.

Compared to the other big cats,

it is one of the least well-known and most secretive,

crafty and perfectly camouflaged.

Jaguars have spent far more time watching humans

from behind a bush

than humans have managed to spend watching jaguars.

(splashing)

(tense music)

It's easy to confuse the jaguar with a leopard,

but they're surprisingly different.

At 50% heavier than the average leopard,

with shorter legs and a much shorter tail,

jaguars also hunt different prey.

Its physique is in fact more tiger-like,

with powerful jaws and powerful front legs and shoulders.

(waves crashing)

For a large predator like the jaguar,

the remote shoreline of Nancite

offers slim pickings.

The total area of beach and forest here

is little more than two square kilometers,

so it would typically make up just a fraction

of the average jaguar territory,

and the chances of actually seeing a jaguar here

would at best be tiny.

But here in Nancite, there are plenty of other predators

and scavengers hanging around, as if waiting for something.

The presence of so many jaguar tracks

suggests something unusual is going on.

(waves crashing)

But filming wild jaguars is one of the hardest

things I've ever tried to do.

The latest high resolution camera traps

gave us a chance to see jaguars in the forest,

but in daylight, all they revealed were nervous animals.

No jaguars.

So we set up on the beach

in the hope we could get a clear view at night.

And waited.

Using only red light to see with,

and super-sensitive starlight cameras to film with.

Without a moon, it's so dark

that even the bioluminescent glow of waves is visible.

But the starlight camera struggles to see detail.

With the help of infrared light,

we can get a clearer view,

and the thermal camera allows us to see anything

that moves on the beach.

A family of raccoons emerges to dig up turtle eggs.

Nancite is a turtle nesting beach,

which is one reason why the American crocodile

is hanging around.

But at this time of year, the nesting season is almost over.

Generally,

only a few single nesters come ashore.

This is an olive ridley, the smallest of the sea turtles.

(waves crashing)

They're much faster to nest than other sea turtles,

so any predator has to find them quickly in the darkness.

For a brief moment, the thermal camera on the clifftops

spots a jaguar on the beach.

(tense music)

It returns to the scrub at the edge of the beach

as if on the trail of something.

My own feeble human vision

can barely see the turtle at close range.

Although cat vision is more sensitive,

it's unlikely a jaguar could see this from a distance.

But the distinctive sound of flippers

slapping on the hard sand could be a giveaway

to super-sensitive hearing.

Human ears could hardly detect this sound

above the waves, but I have observed

coyotes react to small sounds in the surf

a big distance away,

and if coyotes can do this, why not cats?

But it's not until the turtle is actually nesting

that the jaguar makes its move.

The turtles seem to enter a trance-like state,

as if they were unaware of their surroundings

and any threats to them.

Their defenses are designed for sharks, not land predators.

(waves crashing)

The jaguar kills the turtle with a bite to the neck,

cutting the reptile's jugular,

and the turtle is completely helpless.

But the truly remarkable thing about Nancite

is that it isn't home to just one jaguar.

We now know that as many as eight big cats

can visit this beach in one night.

And the biggest males will always take what they want.

Small females have to give way

when faced with a male twice their size.

When there are few turtles, there is competition.

And of course, it's not just jaguars

they need to worry about.

These cats don't like to be out in the open

when they feel there's a threat.

Now the male drags to turtle towards the forest.

Jaguars have been known to eat almost anything,

and have been referred to as dustbins of the forest.

Here they specialize in turtles.

The cats were so relaxed,

we got to witness at close range

their phenomenal jaw strength.

Jaguars are said to have the most powerful bite

of all the big cats,

which could be why they're so adaptable.

Even when they took their kills into thick undergrowth,

we were still able to follow them with trap cams.

The remote images reveal

that each kill lasts about three days.

(sneezes)

And once the ants have found it,

it's just too painful to eat,

unless the jaguar moves it.

As the half moon rises just after midnight,

the beach is transformed.

(dramatic music)

The crocodile returns to the water's edge

as if waiting for something.

Meanwhile, another jaguar appears to patrol the beach.

(tense music)

The crocodile stays near the water for safety,

and now more turtles are arriving.

In the water, they're as light as a feather,

on land, carrying her 40 kilo bulk is an effort.

For reasons scientists don't fully understand,

this beach is just one of a few

that olive ridley turtles use for nesting.

These same animals travel the Pacific,

yet return here to this one spot every year.

She finds the right place and temperature

by smelling the sand.

(waves crashing)

And then she starts to dig.

By the time she's laying,

she's in a trance.

She doesn't even notice me or the cameras.

As if on cue, there's a jaguar.

He doesn't need to listen for the turtles now,

it can see them perfectly well.

(tense music)

As far as I know, this is the first time

a wild jaguar has ever been filmed in moonlight.

(tense music)

This must be one of the most relaxed big cat hunts ever.

The kill technique is the same.

The jaguar pushes the turtle's face into the sand

so it can reach the jugular,

which it cuts.

As the jaguar laps up the turtle's life blood,

the crocodile moves in for a closer look,

but is wise to keep its distance.

Now the jaguar starts to move its prize

away from prying eyes.

But as the cat starts for the forest,

it changes its mind.

(tense music)

Again, the same technique.

In cats, the need to feed

and the desire to kill are not necessarily linked.

Despite the first turtle being enough,

a second is killed too.

(tense music)

It'll be a few years yet before this

two and a half meter crocodile could challenge the jaguar,

but one day it will.

If the big cat doesn't eat it first.

(tense music)

Jaguars were missing here for something like 50 years,

and now they're back

to feed on turtles.

The number of turtles coming ashore is increasing.

They have no knowledge of what is happening on land.

This is the start of a small arribada,

a Spanish word meaning arrival,

used to describe the mass nesting behavior

of the olive ridley turtle.

That's the point, this is a turtle defense strategy

to synchronize nesting so that they saturate

predators with arriving adults

as well as for emerging youngsters.

When the beach is inundated,

even jaguars with the most insatiable drive to kill

are unable to make a significant impact,

and it's predators like jaguars

that create this behavior by preying

disproportionately on the single nesters.

The number of turtles is closely monitored

and we have a good idea of how many come every year,

and what their main threats are.

Jaguars turn out to be way down the list.

(playful music)

By dawn, the arribada is almost over,

some 500 turtles having already nested,

and now the direction of travel

is mostly towards the sea.

Nancite is one of only three major olive ridley rookeries

on the entire Pacific coast.

That jaguars are back after such a long absence

is great news for the cats,

but perhaps for the turtles as well.

Fossils have shown us that jaguars have fed on

these ancient reptiles for hundreds of thousands of years.

Jaguars are a natural part of this beach.

By driving out the coyotes and coatis,

which used to dig up many thousands of eggs each year,

it's actually possible that jaguars

have done the turtles a favor.

There seem to be fewer black vultures

on the beach than I remember from the past,

and that's because they're all hanging around

various turtle kills in another forest.

As far as I can see, the return of the big cats has

changed the ecology of the whole place quite dramatically.

Jaguar scientist Eduardo Carrillo has been watching

the process for 35 years.

(speaking in foreign language)

The fact that we can film jaguars at all

is possibly due to the Nancite Turtle Project,

and mostly to the work of one man.

Wilbert Matamoros has spent most nights

walking the beach for the best part of the last six years

to count and measure nesting turtles.

At first, there were very few jaguars,

and they kept a low profile.

But as the years passed,

the cats became curious.

(speaking in foreign language)

He has spent so much time on the beach with the turtles

that the cats now regard him as just part of the furniture.

Without his constant presence,

it's unlikely that we would have seen a single cat.

Some of the jaguars appeared a bit surprised to see us,

but by the time we had spent a month there,

others began to ignore us completely.

I can tell you that if they don't want to show themselves,

you will never see a jaguar,

and yet here, this beach is utterly unique

in the whole world, and having wild jaguars

just walking 10, 20, 30 meters away has been

one of the most extraordinary privileges of my life.

With the help of radio collars,

Eduardo and his team have been able to track

the movements of the jaguars here

to reveal that some of them alternate their time

between Nancite where they hunt turtles at night

and mountain forests 20 miles away,

where they hunt white-lipped peccaries

during the daylight hours.

As soon as the peccaries detect a jaguar

or any threat,

(teeth clicking)

they use their canines to make this strange sound.

They escape this time,

but as long as a jaguar stays in touch with the herd,

there will always be a chance to catch one.

(speaking in foreign language)

Nancite is a very unusual situation.

Looking at these pictures, it's easy to forget

that places where it is even possible

to film wild jaguars are very rare.

In fact, I know of only one other

where jaguars can be filmed in the wild behaving naturally.

(relaxed music)

Brazil's Pantanal, the world's largest wetland.

(relaxed music)

Caimans, small versions of crocodiles, crowd the bank.

Giant otters patrol the waterways.

And capybaras, the world's largest rodent,

bask in the morning sun.

This is where the biggest of all jaguars

grow to 150 kilos, as big as a lioness.

As with Nancite 10 years ago,

it was almost impossible to see a jaguar here,

but the rise of tourists has helped them

become used to people,

and there's been a huge change in attitude

among ranchers too.

In the space of a decade, the cat that was invisible

to humans can now be seen in the wild

by anyone buying a ticket.

The vultures that scavenge jaguar kills in Costa Rica

are here in numbers too,

keeping an eye on their meal ticket.

So something must be going right for the jaguars.

Despite the fact that there are more caimans here

than any other type of crocodile anywhere else on Earth.

There are thought to be 10 million living in the Pantanal.

On the surface, it doesn't seem to be typical cat country.

(birds chirping)

Most jaguars are quite nocturnal,

but here they can be seen basking in sunlight

or patrolling their territory

or hunting,

and the jaguar has plenty of options.

But this habitat doesn't suit a high-speed chase.

(tense music)

With the approach of a big cat,

(splashing)

everything makes for the water,

which is what you'd expect in broad daylight.

(animals vocalizing)

Caimans, with their own set of powerful jaws

and sharp teeth are not the kind of animal

that is normally preyed upon.

(splashing)

As potential victims, they pose a few problems.

Firstly, once in the water,

the caiman will have far superior speed

and would easily out-swim a jaguar.

Secondly, cats usually kill their prey

with a suffocating bite to the throat,

but caimans can hold their breath for half an hour,

so that won't work.

The only thing that's in the jaguar's favor

is that the cold-blooded reptiles need to bask

in sunlight during the day,

and this is the only chance the big cats have to catch one.

However, caiman have excellent vision

and can see a jaguar coming from a great distance.

A successful hunt requires planning.

(dramatic music)

The jaguar has to get very close without being seen,

and so goes into the forest and moves upstream out of sight.

The jaguar emerges from the forest

directly behind the caiman

in its blind spot.

(tense music)

The cat slips into the water

and swims directly towards the basking reptile

staying exactly where the caiman can't see it.

(dramatic music)

(splashing)

Instead of the typical big cat throat bite,

the jaguar uses crushing jaw power

to bite straight into the brain casing,

and the kill is almost instantaneous.

Perhaps this explains the jaguar's daylight

loving habits here, as caimans spend the night

in the water where the cats can't reach them.

With their ability to swim,

eat anything attitude,

and unparalleled jaw strength,

jaguars have made the forests and swamps

of central and South America their own.

We think of these cats as typical animals of the new world,

but in fact, jaguars began life in Europe and Asia

over a million years ago

and then found their way to the Americas.

Long ago, they disappeared from Eurasia

and we now know from genetic studies that 10,000 years ago,

they came very close to extinction here too.

Luckily, they managed to recolonize

much of their former range, but in modern times,

jaguar distribution is shrinking again.

To see a mother and cub playing in the open like this

was until recently extremely rare.

(tender music) (birds singing)

But now they've begun to show themselves,

we have a real chance to learn more about jaguars

and perhaps find ways of living alongside them.

(relaxed music)