The puma and the capybara

Last Saturday was a rainy day. At around 4.45pm, the rain subsided, and I decided to go over to the forest beside the river (where we have our hide) to check on a camera trap I had placed there the day before. A puma (Puma concolor) had been spotted in this forest a few days earlier by our field guide Adauto, and I was hoping that perhaps my video would pick up some movements of this curious and elusive creature. To get to the forest, I had to walk around a narrow lake no more than 10 metres wide. As I was walking around this lake, I heard about 50 metres behind me a panicked capybara shouting nervously. I turned around and watched the capybara run into the water. My immediate thought was, 'There must be a predator going after it.' And no sooner had I had this thought when I saw a large female puma leaping into the water after the capybara!!!! The puma grabbed the capybara by the neck (to suffocate it) and stayed with it in the water.
The puma could not see me thanks to a high bank beside the lake, and as I was so close to the house, I decided to quickly go back and get my camera to try to document some of what I was witnessing. But instead of going back to where I was before, I decided to find a place on the high bank which was closer and which perfectly overlooked the puma and the capybara...


By this time the capybara was dead, and so the puma began the difficult process of dragging the body out of the water. This was an adult male capybara - a very heavy creature - so it was all the more impressive to watch her pull it out by just its nose...


The puma was in a hurry to get the capybara back to a sheltered place away from any other hungry eyes. She pulled the body all the way up to the forest's edge, and just before disappearing into the shadows of the forest with her kill, she stopped and glanced up in my direction...


A few months earlier, we got a photo with our camera trap in the same forest of a mother puma with cubs. If this puma is this same mother, and she has youngsters to feed, this could explain her being visibly thin. She then melted into the darkness of the forest, and no sooner had she disappeared, when all of a sudden there were raucous alarm calls from purplish jays, alerting other animals of her presence.
I headed back to the house, not believing what I had just experienced. It goes to show that you just never know what nature has in store.