other wildlife in the Pantanal and the Amazon

Some of the people with me on my holiday in Brazil were not birders, and even those of us who were there for the birds were also keen to see some of the other inhabitants of Mato Grosso state. The iconic jaguar was top of the wanted list for most of us, and we had a couple of days at Porto Jofre where they are most often seen (from a boat) as they come to the edge of one of the rivers to drink or hunt.  After many hours on the water, in fact when we were on our way back for lunch, we finally found our jaguar - a female, apparently with two large cubs in tow although we did not see the cubs.  She prowled through the vegetation alongside the river, occasionally coming right down to the water as in the picture above, giving us plenty of time to admire her and try to get a decent picture.

What you don't realise from the picture above, however, is that there must have been a dozen or so boats jostling for position on the water as we all followed her progress - many belching out fumes from their engines - and a small number going much closer than they should have, at one  point effectively blocking her from swimming across a small tributary as they all tried to get a better view for their occupants.  It detracted a little from the experience, for me at least, and I hope they can soon put in place some regulations to prevent these magnificent animals from being hassled.  They are certainly used to being watched by tourists whenever they come to the water's edge but I felt it had gone a little too far.  In the afternoon we came upon another load of people watching a jaguar cub swim across the river; we kept our distance so as not to disturb the animal, and were later told that it had spent a lot of time at the water's edge, clearly wanting to cross (the mother was already on the other side), before the boats eventually backed off a little to give some space.

Besides the jaguars I think our favourite mammal of the trip was the tamandua, a member of the anteater family with black and tan fur, that forages in the forest for termites.  This tamandua was aware that it was being watched (we were upwind so able to get quite close but eventually it heard the ten pairs of feet crunching on dead leaves and sticks) and so stood up on its back legs and opened its front legs wide - as if to embrace us - in an attempt to look big and frightening. Sadly no pictures good enough to share.

A giant anteater was also seen, briefly by torchlight, and this cute little nine-banded armadillo.

There were capybara everywhere, one even allowing a couple of us to approach within less than three metres, and caiman too although none of us tried to approach them quite so closely.  We saw one very nearly catch a monitor lizard that was right behind its tail - a good lesson in quite how quickly they can move when they sense prey.

We saw plenty of otters too, both giant river otters (always in family groups) and the solitary neotropical otters.  In the Pantanal we were surprised to come across a couple of tapir feeding in the forest, as these animals are not seen very often, especially whilst on foot.  Then later in the Amazon we saw one drinking at the water's edge, this one much better placed for us to take pictures.

There were other creatures too: an enormous tarantula, a sleeper snake, howler, spider and cappuchin monkeys, wild guinea pigs, giant cicadas that squawked when I touched them, and far too many ticks.  In the Amazon I was removing ten or so at the end of every day despite tucking my trousers into my socks and slapping on the insect repellent (which I'm thinking doesn't actually work against ticks?).  Most of us got bitten by ants, and around half the group got stung by bees...  But it was all well worth it to see such a fabulous array of birds and animals.