MANAUS, BRAZIL - Belarusian cyclist Serge Buzo came face-to-face with a jaguar and ended up being “chased” by the animal while riding along the BR-319 highway in the interior of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. The jaguar emerged from the forest and followed him for several meters along the road.
Serge managed to speed up and escape unharmed. At one point during the approach, he lifted his bicycle to appear larger than the jaguar and even let out a deep growl in an attempt to intimidate the animal. He recorded the entire encounter.
Buzo has lived in Brazil since the pandemic, after leaving Belarus due to the dictatorship, and has been cycling across South America.
In the video, the cyclist is seen riding and saying, “The jaguar is behind me. Do you think I’m joking?”
In another moment, as he searches for tracks on the road, the jaguar appears behind him again. “Get out of here, go away. She doesn’t look very big, but she’s still scary,” he says as he tries to scare the animal off.
Serge said he began recording and searching for tracks to confirm the jaguar’s presence. He reported seeing the animal cross the road less than 100 meters away.
“I didn’t see where the jaguar came from, but it started walking closer to me. I thought about waiting for a car to pass by so I could ride along with it, but there was nothing. So I kept going, paying attention,” he explained.
He believes the animal was not fully grown. According to him, the chase lasted about three minutes. “It didn’t look very small, but not too big either. I thought that when I shouted, it would run back into the forest, but it wasn’t scared. So I decided to sit on the bike and keep pedaling, always looking back,” he said.
Biologist and Tropical Zoo director Nonato Amaral said encounters between jaguars and humans are uncommon. In the case of BR-319, he believes the animal may have been a young individual exploring its surroundings out of curiosity.
The specialist emphasized that humans are not part of the jaguar’s food chain and that, in that moment, the animal showed no intention of attacking.
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