I fought a jaguar with my bare hands to save my nephews

A hero uncle made sure a jaguar kept its paws off his nephews — by fighting it off with his bare hands. 

Erivaldo Moriman was on a camping trip in Salt do Augusto, Brazil, on Aug. 13 with his nephews, ages 15 and 18, when he bravely intervened, Newsflash reported. 

Moriman had just returned to his campsite after a morning walk on the banks of the Juruena River when he spotted the jaguar attacking his kin.

Moriman shouted and waved his arms at the big cat to distract it from his teen nephews.

The diversion worked all too well — and the jaguar wrestled Moriman to the ground.

Moriman grabbed the big cat’s leg, and it bit his head, leaving him with deep wounds on his scalp and a river of blood on his face. 

“She dropped the boys and came at me. I shouted to the boys that the jaguar was going to get me, and when they looked up, it had already got me,” he recalled of the terrifying ordeal.

“I held onto her leg behind a tree trunk and kept holding on. I foolishly tried to run, and as I tried to run, she attacked again, and that’s when she got me. She didn’t just scratch me; she actually bit me on the head,” he continued. 

The hospital treated Moriman’s gruesome head injuries with 150 stitches, though he wasn’t able to get help right away.

He had to bear the pain of his injuries while taking a two-hour boat ride to a private lodge’s airstrip.

Luckily, a doctor was staying at the lodge and gave Moriman some first aid before he traveled another three hours to Albert Sabin Regional Hospital in Alta Floresta.

“It was very hard for us to witness this, to experience this, to embrace a jaguar. Nobody believes it, but it was true,” said Moriman, who was released from the hospital the next day.

He is lucky to be alive: Jaguars have the most powerful bite out of any big cat, according to the UK’s World Wildlife Fund. 

“They need powerful teeth and jaws to take down prey three to four times their own weight — usually killing it with a bite to the back of the skull rather than biting the neck or throat like other big cats,” the site explained.