[Aztlan] Man-eating jaguars

[David Stuart]

Here's a news item from 1985 that may be relevant to the discussion  
about man-eating jaguars.  I am also reminded of the Maya  
hieroglyphic sign that shows a jaguar with a WINIK "man, person" sign  
in its mouth -- clearly representing the same idea as "tecuani" in  
Nahuatl.

David Stuart

****
Cage Door Is Blamed In Fatal Jaguar Attack

UPI
Published NY Times: December 14, 1985
A 200-pound jaguar pushed open a motorized automatic door on its  
holding cage before attacking and killing a 30-year-old zookeeper,  
city investigators said today.The zookeeper, Gayle Booth of Kent  
City, who was seven months' pregnant, was found dead in a holding  
area Sunday at the John Ball Park Zoo inside the building that housed  
the jaguar. Officials said the attack is under investigation.


On Jun 1, 2007, at 10:57 AM, nhopkins at mailer.fsu.edu wrote:

> Sorry to jump in late to the discussion, but I've been on the  
> road.  In
> some 40 years of field work in Mesoamerica, I  don't think I have ever
> heard an account of a jaguar attack on a human, altho I have certainly
> been in the right places to hear about it.  On the other hand, there
> are many stories that involve non-empirical jaguars eating people.
> Bear in mind that in the Maya area (and to some extent elsewhere)
> jaguars are the most powerful animal counterparts of humans and share
> the souls of powerful humans, so the depictions of jaguars eating
> humans could very well be metaphorical, i.e., the jaguar nagual of
> someone acting against another person.  There are at least two Chol
> folktales that involve jaguars eating people and taking on their human
> forms (see the Josserand/Hopkins FAMSI report on Story Cycles).  One
> involves a jaguar who eats a man on his way home, then shows up at his
> house in the form of the man, but when he goes to sleep his jaguar  
> hair
> begins to come back out and he is discovered.  The other involves a
> jaguar that eats a woman and then shows up at her comadres' house and
> they go out to collect snails.  But the jaguar is seen to collect  
> rocks
> instead of snails (he doesn't understand what is going on), and  
> when he
> leans over, his tail sticks out from under his skirt, and he is
> detected.  Both stories then go on to describe the chase and ultimate
> escape of the humans, who live to tell the tale.
>
> In other words, I have never heard of an "actual" jaguar attack on
> humans, but there are plenty of folktales about jaguars devouring
> people.        Nick Hopkins
>
>
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