- This page is about the episode. For the animal character, see Shadow.
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"Shadow: The Black Jaguar" is the 9th episode of Season 2 of the PBS Kids show Wild Kratts. It is the 49th episode of the series overall. It premiered on April 2, 2013. On April 9, 2013, "Shadow: The Black Jaguar" was first released on DVD as part of Wild Kratts: Rainforest Rescue.
In this episode, the Wild Kratts receive a distress call from a Wild Kratts Kid in Central America, who found out that inventor Zach Varmitech is plotting to use a black jaguar in one of his schemes.
Plot[]
The episode begins with a live-action segment. The Kratt brothers are looking for jaguars, but at this time, they are unable to find a single one. Afterward, they ask their "What if?" question, and the show transitions into the cartoon segment.
As the Wild Kratts's Tortuga flies in the Earth's atmosphere, the Kratt brothers are wondering where to head to for their next adventure, which they narrow down to a wildcat-themed one. Meanwhile, Zach Varmitech is spying on them via one of his Zachbots. Zach plots to find a wild cat that would make a good symbol for his new Spybots, which turns out to be a black jaguar. He takes his jet down to the lowland tropical rainforests of Central America and dispatches his Zachbots. Wild Kratts Kid Nina finds out and she calls the Wild Kratts. The Kratt brothers finalize on a jaguar-themed adventure in Central America.
The brothers find Jimmy sleeping and they tell him to wake up. After a failed attempt, Martin tells Jimmy that his controller fell out of the window and is falling to Central America. Jimmy then wakes up and flies to get it. Jimmy lands the Tortuga in Central America after Martin tricked him into taking them there. In addition, he finds out that his controller was with him the whole time.
Knowing that jaguars are very difficult to find, the Kratt brothers, Aviva, and Nina decide to search for jaguar prey. Not long after, they find a female jaguar, and afterward, they follow it to the river bank and see it swim to the other side. To catch up, Martin, with the press of a button, unveils a water raft. However, he forgot the paddles.
Once Martin pushes the raft to the other side of the river, the jaguar looks back and looks as if she was going to pounce on the raft, only for her to jump back into the water near the raft where the others see her attacking a caiman. Aviva is amazed but wasn't able to see them anymore. Nina asks Martin if the jaguar always wins, Martin replies that they win most of the time and Chris adds that they never know. Nina then sees the jaguar drag the caiman out of the water after having finally taken it out. Chris states that this was a never before seen moment and Martin thinks that it happens every day somewhere down here, though people almost never see it.
Martin then states that jaguars are rarely found on the hunt, even though they'll predate on just about everything in their rainforest kingdom. He shows several of the animals that jaguars prey on as he and Chris name them: spider monkeys, tapirs, peccaries, anteaters, sloths, and armadillos. Chris concludes that they can sneak up on just about every creature they can catch. Aviva then tells them that the jaguar was sneaking away from them, so Martin continues to paddle the others towards the shore.
Soon, the group follows the jaguar to her lair. The Kratt brothers miniaturize and enter, where they find that she is a mom with a cub, in the form of a black jaguar, which Martin names Shadow. The Kratt brothers and Shadow exit the den, but then, Zachbots arrive and abduct Shadow. Martin throws a pebble, distracting the Zachbot holding Shadow, which crashes into a tree. Shadow falls into Aviva's hands; however, another Zachbot seizes Aviva by her foot. The Zachbot shakes Aviva, causing her to drop Shadow into the claw arms of another Zachbot, which then drops Aviva.
After returning to normal size, the Kratt brothers activate their Spider Monkey Creature Power Suits and pursue the Zachbots, but soon after, the Zachbots cheatfully throw the Kratt brothers down. Aviva then gives Jaguar Discs to them. The Kratt brothers touch a jaguar and activate their Creature Power Suits and Chris immediately gets black fur while Martin has orange fur but only needs to reactivate himself until he has black fur, after several attempts he finally achieves it, they pursue and enter Zach's Jet just before it takes off. Once inside, Zach questions that Shadow is the black jaguar, he said he was black, that was correct but his size was questionable, when he found out that it was a "puppy" he understood but he needed it to be big, Zach found out that Shadow would grow in two years and when Not being able to wait, he decided to inject him with a growth serum and asked the Zachbots for ingredients, then he put Shadow on his pedestal and Zach started laughing with his eyes closed, then the Kratt brothers took Shadow and escaped. In the end, the Kratt brothers reunite Shadow with his mother.
The show transitions into the ending live action segment. The Kratt brothers still have not found a jaguar. Instead, they set up a motion-sensing camera in a cave. Afterward, the Kratt brothers conclude the episode by saying "Keep on creature adventuring; we'll see you on the creature trail!" At the very end, the camera takes a picture of a passing jaguar.
Characters[]
Animals[]
Animation[]
Note: Featured animals are in bold.
- Jaguar: Shadow
- Geoffroy's Spider Monkey (called spider monkey): Grabsy
- Spectacled Caiman (called caiman)
Live Action Videos[]
Note: Live action animals are linked to Wikipedia.
- Lion
- Cheetah
- Caracal
- Cougar
- Snow leopard
- Ocelot
- Margay
- Serval
- Tiger
- Spider monkey
- Giant anteater (called anteater)
- Brown-throated sloth (called sloth)
- Six-banded armadillo (called armadillo)
Mentioned[]
Note: Mentioned animals are linked to Wikipedia.
Live Action[]
Note: Live action animals are linked to Wikipedia.
- Leopard
- Baird's tapir (called tapir)
- White-lipped peccary (called peccary)
Trivia[]
- The Tortuga is capable of hovering high up near the edge of Earth's atmosphere.
- The image of the snow leopard was reused from the Kratt brothers's previous PBS Kids show Zoboomafoo.
- Zach has always wanted to create a growth-acceleration formula but was apparently always too distracted by the Kratt brothers.
- This is the first appearance of Zach's cargo plane, which would go on to be his main source of transportation later in the series.
Key Facts and Creature Moments[]
- There are 36 different species of wildcat on the planet.
- Difference between leopards and jaguars: Leopards are from Africa and Asia, have no rosettes and are smaller and leaner. Jaguars are from central and South America, have rosettes, and are bigger and heavier. (Explained in the live action segment)
- Jaguars are the apex predator of South America rainforests, they hunt just about every rainforest animal they can sneak up on and catch including tapirs, anteaters, monkeys, deer, peccaries and caimans.
- Jaguars have spotted coats to blend in with the dappled light and shadows of the rainforest.
- Approximately one out of every 16 jaguars have black fur.
- One theory as to why some jaguars are black is to help them camouflage better in darker denser rainforests.
- Jaguars are one of the most aquatic cats, they love to swim and can even catch their prey in water.
- A jaguar hunting and killing a caiman.
- A jaguar only rests in a den when it has cubs.
- The first emergence of a black jaguar cub from the den.