A research center based at the University of Arizona says its cameras have spotted the same jaguar at the same spot multiple times.
Susan Malusa is the center’s director; she joined The Show to talk more about Cinco’s sighting.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Susan, what is the significance of seeing a jaguar at this sighting and seeing it there repeatedly?
SUSAN MALUSA: Well, Cinco showed up on our cameras in November 2025. And really what made that moment really special for us is where he showed up. It was a site that we’ve been monitoring for almost 15 years, and it’s a place where we had a previous jaguar detection. So to see a new individual come back to that same location is really important in our research. It shows the site fidelity, the value of these historical sites that jaguars return to.
MARK BRODIE: Why is it important that this jaguar came back to a site that a previous jaguar had also been to years before?
SUSAN MALUSA: Well, when we look at landscape and we know that just as a species, jaguar needs landscape connectivity. They need they move from sky island to sky island, and that connectivity, and they that connectivity to the core population, and when I say population, that means a breeding population, which is in Mexico.
So we know jaguars move across large landscapes. So when you’re trying to look at the historical range and then identify what’s the key habitat, what can I learn here so that we make sure that these corridors, this connectivity remains intact, we’re able to look at our 15-year dataset and say three jaguars have returned to this same spot.
What’s unique about this? What what prey species are there? We can see this with a — we developed a software program where we can look spatially at the landscape and see what the terrain is like, what the vegetation is like, what distance to water, and we can kind of connect the dots and say, "OK, this is the type of location that a jaguar likes."
So when we put all this together and we say, "OK, these 10 spots are really, they all have the same thing in common," but then one spot, which actually had a previous jaguar, is the exact spot the jaguar returns to. That’s the site fidelity, that’s where we’re saying there’s something special there. And we can see in this in exciting video that we recently released where the jaguar’s using scent at that detection site.
MARK BRODIE: How significant to the overall health of this species is it that you have now seen this particular jaguar in this particular place, whereas we’ve talked about, you know, previous jaguars have also been?
SUSAN MALUSA: It’s very significant when we’re looking at a species that we’re trying to utilize this data, or we at the Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center are building this dataset so the data can be used for jaguar conservation. Because this is such a sensitive and vulnerable species, having that data, not just a picture — picture’s are a moment in time and they’re beautiful and exciting, and we can learn from them — but it’s the whole story.
MARK BRODIE: I want to ask you about the significance of the fact that the the jaguars that you’ve seen have all been male. And I would imagine that you would like to see a little more gender diversity in in the jaguars you’re seeing there. Is that right?
SUSAN MALUSA: Absolutely, absolutely. This is about recovery, right? And recovery is reached when you have sustainability, and that means we need males and females on the landscape. But that being said, when you’re looking at the science of it all, males are what you would expect to see. Males disperse first, and they disperse further. So the fact that we’re continuously seeing males on the landscape at intervals that are closer together than the previous years, that’s a step, that’s a sign we’re moving in the right direction.
MARK BRODIE: So, what are you looking for now, now that you have this data, you’ve seen Cinco in this particular area? Like, what what are you looking for next, what would you like to see next?
SUSAN MALUSA: Oh, you know, we’ve I’ve been doing this project for 15 years, and I feel like we’ve just scratched the surface. There’s so much to learn. Recovery isn’t just about showing up, it’s getting to sustainability. And step one is, can the landscape support jaguars? We’re seeing that the landscape is supporting jaguars.
But there is a lot more to learn. It’s encouraging that we still see them and that there’s connectivity, but we need to make sure that that stays intact. Why they return to these exact same spots is still something we’re trying to learn more about.
So it’s important for us to continue to study what makes those places on the landscape so very special. And we’re able to do that because we have this citizen science team that allows us to collect so much data.
And then we have our camera long-term monitoring. We also have two more layers, if you will. We utilize genetics in two different ways. We collect scat on the landscape, and so that can reveal the health of the animal, the diet of the animal. So what is it eating? What are the prey species? And what we see in that is that it really does rely on native prey.
And then the environmental DNA, that’s where we filter water. It’s almost like a little coffee filter. We we pump it through, it just pulls the water through a little filter. And it’s so noninvasive the water goes right back into the little puddle it came from. And that’s very critical when you have such small amounts of of water in this arid landscape.
And we bring that filter, that little tiny paper filter goes into a test tube, we bring it back to our our wildlife genetics lab, and we’re able to extract the DNA and see all the different species that went through there — not at that point, even tributaries that are where water is going into that little pond.
MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Susan Malusa, the director of the Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center at the University of Arizona. Susan, thanks a lot, I really appreciate it.
SUSAN MALUSA: Thank you. Thank you, Mark.
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