RIO NEGRO, Brazil — An injured jaguar swimming in the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon River in Brazil, got an unexpected assist from military police in the country when they came across the animal earlier this month.
The big cat had been struggling in the water for several hours when military police were called in to help, according to a social media post from authorities in Amazonas, the Brazilian state where the rescue occurred. Working from a boat, they fashioned a flotation device, and the critter, weakened and struggling, held on to it for dear life as the craft pulled the animal to land and safety, video of the rescue shows.
The video shows military authorities on a boat trying to calm the animal, while the cat clings to the flotation device as the boat cuts through the water toward land. The animal, a male, according to the BBC, had been shot, and veterinarians who treated it found 30 pieces of shrapnel in the cat. The rescue occurred Oct. 1, and the animal, after treatment, was taken to a zoo to recover.
"It's heartbreaking yet beautiful — that moment when a wild jaguar chooses to trust humans. Nature always finds a way to remind us how connected we really are," one commenter wrote in reaction to the video, posted by We Love Animals, among other sites.
Brazil is home to around half the world's jaguar population, distributed across 18 countries from Mexico south to Argentina, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The cats' existence, however, is threatened by human population growth and development. "It is estimated that jaguars have lost approximately 50% of their historic range, with a 20% decline in a period of just 14 years, and have gone extinct in El Salvador and Uruguay," according to the organization.
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