![]() ![]() When Europeans colonised the New World, the diseases they carried killed 90 per cent of the indigenous population. They are also not aggressive toward humans (there are no “man-eating” jaguars).īut what struck me most of all was that much of what has kept the western hemisphere’s largest cat off the endangered species list has come down to blind luck. And of its adaptability (these cats crossed a land bridge from northern Asia before settling in the tropics of North, Central and South America). We learn of the animal’s savagery (jaguars kill by crushing the skulls of their prey). And in telling the cat’s story, Rabinowitz takes the reader on a personal quest, from ancient Mayan ruins to London Zoo, as he seeks to uncover the unique “jaguarness” of the animal he seeks to protect. An Indomitable Beast begins with an exhaustively researched natural history of the jaguar from palaeo to present. ![]()
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