Jaguars have a short, deep skull with a high sagittal crest and broad zygomatic arches, giving unusually large attachment areas for the temporalis muscle. The result is a bite that is very strong relative to the animal's body size, delivered through short, robust canines set in a compact jaw.
Field observations across the Pantanal and Central America record jaguars killing capybara, peccary and caiman with a bite to the head that punctures the cranium, as well as with the more common nape bite. The head-bite is regularly reported on armoured or thick-skinned prey, where a throat hold is impractical, and it is one reason jaguars take caiman more readily than other large cats take crocodilians.
A persistent claim is that the jaguar has the strongest bite of any cat in absolute terms. That is not supported: lions and tigers generate greater absolute bite force simply by being larger. What the jaguar leads on is bite force relative to body mass, and even that ranking depends on which model and which specimens are used.