440#? Yikes. Mountain lions around here are half that size. I did some searching and learned a lot. Totally different type of cat.
There's a reason they were extirpated. These types of animals are great, as long as one doesn't have to live with them around, when they decide to not work as hard for their meals.
You can read about Alexander “Sasha” Siemel in his own book “Tigrero”, if you can find it, or in Peter Hathaway Capstick’s excellent, “Death in the Silent Places”
Capstick relates that the size of jaguars varies with their locales. A large jaguar in Mexico might weigh 200 lb while in the Mato Grosso that Siemel hunted 350 lbs and up defined the big cats.
The skin of one killed by Siemel was bigger than that of a large African male lion. Sheer size of the skin indicates a weight of well over 400 pounds.
One jaguar that almost killed Siemel measured out at nine feet and three inches and an estimated weight approaching four hundred pounds.
If you can snag either book you’re in for an exciting read.
Hi, LJ! They’re not as heavy as 440 pounds in CO, either, but they’ve really been getting around. Don’t know their weight, but they range in height between about 28 to 36 inches high at the shoulder when on all fours and walking. There are gobs of them, though, leaving tracks and sign all over the place and more often being seen even during the day. It’s not from more people moving in around here (CO), because the local human population has been decreasing (foreclosures, regulations, high fuel prices, tax and fee hikes, environmentalism, animal protection law against agriculture, gun control, etc.).