Methodological study on different recording rules applied to the behavior of a male captive jaguar (Panthera onca).

This study on a seven-year-old male jaguar, at the Ambue Ari Sanctuary in Bolivia, was performed to compare different recording rules. Starting from videos recorded by camera traps over the period of a month, a much smaller sample of these was selected. Later the animal behavior was analyzed with both continuous and instantaneous sampling (at 5-second intervals). The aim was to compare the differences these two methods can produce in the overall results. The average correlation obtained for all the categories was 0.941 (P-value<0.001; two-tailed), and considering all the single behaviors, it was 0.932 (P-value<0.001; two-tailed). This brings us to the conclusion that the two used methods are highly correlated, and they can subsequently be interchanged. An analysis was carried out also considering the presence and absence of people, and it highlighted into which data collection method (camera traps or direct recordings) is more appropriate for the kind of behaviors one wants to investigate.