A wildlife photographer captured an epic battle in South America between two of the area’s fiercest animals. The photographer was on a guided boat tour when he recorded this firsthand account of a jaguar taking out a caiman.
The photographer, Benjamin James Knobel, guides tours through the Pantanal. The region is a massive tropical wetland that’s mainly in Brazil. The area also has the largest healthy jaguar population in the world.
The Pantanal allows for the backdrop for epic videos like this:
In a video he posted, you can see a jaguar emerge from the grasses near the edge of a river. At first glance, it’s hard to know what brought the animal to the water’s edge until it pounces into the water and disappears. Moments later, it remerges with what appears to be a caiman, an animal related to alligators and crocodiles. In the end, the jaguar wins the fight.
According to Knobel, jaguars only have a 5% success rate at hunting, so they can spend days tracking their prey. Knowing this was a rare moment, Knobel simply commented, “One of the best moments ever” on his Instagram account.
