Jaguars are superb swimmers and actually love water - unlike most cats. They swim across rivers and even hunt fish, turtles, and caimans in the water. Their name comes from a Native American word meaning 'he who kills with one leap'.
A jaguar's spots are not simple dots. Each dark marking is a rosette - a ring of spots with a central dot. Every jaguar has a unique pattern, just like your fingerprint. Scientists use camera traps in the jungle and photograph jaguars to identify each individual.
Jaguars have extraordinarily powerful jaws - the strongest of any big cat relative to their size. They can bite right through the shell of a turtle or the thick hide of a caiman. Their bite is nearly three times stronger than a lion's, pound for pound.
In Honduras, the jaguar is a symbol of strength and was greatly respected by the ancient Maya. Jaguar images appear on temples, pottery, and stelae all across Honduras. Some Maya rulers wore jaguar pelts as a sign of power and connection to the spirit world.
Today jaguars need large areas of connected forest to thrive. Conservation projects in Honduras work with local communities to protect forest corridors - pathways of wild land that let jaguars travel safely from one forest to another.