Jaguar breaks records by swimming at least 1.3 kilometres

Camera traps show that an adult male jaguar swam at least 1.3 kilometres to an island in the reservoir of the Serra da Mesa dam in central Brazil – by far the longest recorded swim by one of these animals.

In fact, it’s possible the jaguar swam nearly twice as far. Reaching the island would have required either a 1-km swim to a smaller island, followed by the 1.3-km swim, or a 2.3-km direct swim from the mainland with no stop.

“We are being conservative by assuming that this cat did use a small island on the way as a stepping stone,” says Leandro Silveira at the Jaguar Conservation Fund in Brazil. “It could in fact have swum the 2.3-kilometre straight line.”

Silveira says that, as far as he knows, this is the longest swim by any big cat that has been confirmed by direct evidence. Jaguars are known to be excellent swimmers that will even hunt caimans in water. However, until now, there were no reports of them swimming more than 200 metres at a time, says Silveira.

In 2020, his team set up several camera traps around the Serra da Mesa Dam. In May of that year, an adult male was photographed on the mainland. Four years later, in August 2024, the same cat – identified by its distinct coat pattern – was recorded by a camera on the island.

This comes after a collared cougar made a 1.1-km swim to Squaxin Island off the coast of Washington state, and sightings suggest cougars in the area swim up to 2 km to some islands. Two male lions were also filmed swimming across a waterway in Uganda last year, with the distance estimated to be between 1 and 1.5 kilometres. In that case, the motivation was thought to be reaching females that were calling on the other side.

Why the jaguar made such a long swim isn’t clear. “The island is relatively small,” says Silveira. “As far as we know, there is no abundant prey on the island that would be a large attraction.”

Jaguars can probably swim a lot further. There is a population on the Maracá–Jipioca islands more than 5 km off the coast of Brazil that is thought to have interbred with mainland jaguars.