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It is true that there are no great stories of evil maneater jags, like there are with leopards, but I assure you, that is not because they are pussycats compared to leopards. You can throw mountain lions in the same category as the jags, also, as they also do not have the reputation for maneating that leopards have. But this is not because they are pussycats compared to the leopard. It is for a variety of other reasons. In the areas where jags live, there are not as many jags or people as there are leopards and people in leopard habitat. Also, when jags eat people, the outside world rarely hears about it. And with mountain lions, ever since European settlers first set foot on North America, everyone had firearms, which has always made it very difficult for mountain lions to eat people and live long to tell about it. This has not traditionally been the case in leopard habitat. The human populations in leopard areas have simply not been armed with firearms, in general, in the way North Americans have always been. A good example of this has been the recent increase in lions killing and eating people in California, where they are no longer hunted. They are proliferating beyond belief, and even worse, they are now beginning to look at people as something to eat rather than something to be feared. There was a scientist who recently pointed this out, and of course she was immediatedly repudiated and reviled by the animal lover fanatics for suggesting such a thing.. But it is the truth, nonetheless.. Over the last couple hundred or so years, human popolations in Asia and Africa have been a LOT more defenseless against big cats than human populations in North America. It was, in fact, the European settlers with their prolific firearms that extirpated the jag from the American South and West by the 1930's. Firearms were never anywhere near that prolific in Asia and Africa.

Anyway, you are absolutely right in that these cats do not have the maneating reputaton of leopards, but it is only because they lack the opportunity, NOT motive! The leopard has the motive and opportunity to eat people in large numbers. The other big cats have the motive to eat a lot of people, but compared to the leopard, few opportunities.

I will guarantee you, if you could go back 200 years, and take the leopard out of Asia and Africa, and put him in North America and the jungles of Central and South America, and relocate the mountain lion and jag to Asia and Africa, their respective contemporary reputations as maneaters would also be reversed accordingly. Then the question today would be, "Is the leopard a pussycat compared to the jag and mountain lion?" A cat, is a cat, is a cat.

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