Ocelot
The ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) is a medium sized wild cat of the Americas, about twice the size of a house cat, with a golden to grayish coat covered in black edged rosettes, spots and stripes that form chain like patterns along the body. Its name comes from ocelotl, the Nahuatl word the Aztecs used for the jaguar. It ranges from southern Texas through Mexico and Central America to northern Argentina, living in rainforests, dry forests, thorn scrub, mangroves and wooded savannas from sea level to about 3,000 meters, always where there is dense cover. Mostly active at night, it rests by day in thickets, hollow trees or branches and hunts on the ground for rodents, opossums, armadillos, iguanas, birds and fish; it climbs and swims well. Adults are solitary and hold large territories. Females usually raise a single kitten every two years, a slow pace for a cat of its size. Hundreds of thousands of ocelots were killed for their fur in the 1960s and 1970s. Today the IUCN lists it as Least Concern but decreasing, while in the United States, where fewer than 100 survive in South Texas, it is protected as Endangered.
What is an ocelot?
The ocelot is the largest of the small spotted cats of the Americas, the genus Leopardus, which also includes the margay, the oncilla, Geoffroy's cat and the kodkod. Its English name comes from ocelotl, the Nahuatl word the Aztecs used for the jaguar, and it does look like a small jaguar at first sight, with a golden coat and dark rosettes. The two are not close relatives, though: the jaguar belongs to the big cats of the genus Panthera, and an adult jaguar can weigh ten times as much as an ocelot. Across Latin America the ocelot has many local names. In Mexico it is the ocelote, in Costa Rica and Panama it is often called manigordo, or fat hands, for its large front paws, in Colombia and Ecuador it is one of the cats called tigrillo, and in Argentina it is known as gato onza. Scientists recognize two subspecies, one from Central America and Mexico to northwestern South America, and one across the rest of South America. Ocelots are often confused with margays, which are smaller and live more in the trees, and in Texas and northern Mexico they share the brush with bobcats, which have short tails and much plainer coats.
How big is an ocelot compared to a house cat?
An ocelot is roughly twice the size of a house cat. Adults measure about 55 to 100 centimeters from nose to the base of the tail, with a fairly short tail of 26 to 45 centimeters, and weigh about 7 to 16 kilograms. Males are clearly bigger than females, often by a third or more, and ocelots in the tropics tend to be larger than those at the northern and southern edges of the range. They are stocky and muscular, with a broad head, short legs and wide front paws, which is where the Central American name manigordo comes from. The coat is short and smooth, from cream and golden yellow to gray, with black spots on the legs, two black stripes on each cheek, and on the back and flanks open rosettes and bands edged in black that often join into chain like lines. No two ocelots have the same pattern, so researchers identify individuals from camera trap photos. The belly is white, the tail is ringed or barred with black, and the backs of the ears are black with a white spot in the middle. The eyes are large and brown, with a mirror layer behind the retina that helps them see in very low light.
Ocelot vs margay vs jaguar: how to tell them apart
Three spotted cats of the American tropics are often confused. The jaguar is by far the biggest, usually 50 to more than 100 kilograms, with a massive head and large rosettes that often have small spots inside them; a jaguar footprint is bigger than a person's palm. The ocelot is a medium sized cat of 7 to 16 kilograms with a relatively short tail, shorter than its hind legs, and a coat of chain like bands and open rosettes. The margay is the smallest of the three, usually 3 to 4 kilograms, with a very long tail, longer than its hind legs, huge eyes and a rounder head. The margay is built for life in the trees: it can rotate its hind ankles and climb down trunks head first, something the ocelot cannot do, and it spends much more of its time off the ground. The ocelot hunts mostly on the forest floor. Where ocelots are common, smaller cats such as margays and oncillas tend to be scarcer, apparently because ocelots compete with them and sometimes kill them. Biologists call this the ocelot effect. In the dark, camera trap photos are the best way to tell them apart, by looking at tail length, body size and the shape of the spots.
Where do ocelots live?
Ocelots live from the southern United States to northern Argentina. The IUCN lists them as residents of every country of Central America, Mexico and most of South America: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina, as well as the island of Trinidad. In the United States, a small population survives in the thorn scrub of South Texas, and male ocelots from Sonora in Mexico have been photographed in southern Arizona. The IUCN also includes Uruguay, but the last confirmed records there are about a century old. The ocelot is not found in Chile or high in the Andes. Within this huge range it is very flexible about habitat: tropical rainforest, cloud forest, dry deciduous forest, thorn scrub, mangroves, flooded forests and wooded savannas, from sea level to about 3,000 meters. What all these places share is dense ground cover, which the ocelot needs to rest by day and to stalk prey at night. It avoids large open areas and farmland without cover, although it can cross them at night and lives in regrowing forest and plantations if enough thick vegetation remains.
What do ocelots eat?
Ocelots are strict carnivores that eat whatever small animals are most common where they live. Most of their prey weighs less than about 1 kilogram, and rodents such as spiny rats, rice rats, cotton rats and agoutis are usually the main part of the diet. They also hunt opossums, armadillos, rabbits, young deer and peccaries now and then, monkeys, sloths, iguanas and other lizards, snakes, frogs, land crabs, fish and ground birds. In Texas, rabbits and rodents of the thorn scrub are key prey, while in the Amazon an ocelot may catch fish and crabs along streams or take an iguana from a low branch. Ocelots usually hunt alone, walking slowly along trails and stopping to watch and listen, or sitting still for long periods near a spot where prey is likely to pass. When they see a target they stalk it and pounce, killing small animals with a bite to the neck or head. They often bring large prey into cover and eat it there, starting at the head, and they may come back to a carcass over several nights. A single ocelot needs to eat around half a kilogram of meat or more a day, so it covers several kilometers each night looking for food.
How do ocelots live? Night hunting and territories
Ocelots are mostly active at night and at dusk, although in quiet places and on cloudy days they also move during the day. They rest in dense thickets, hollow trees, rock crevices or on branches, often changing resting spots from day to day. Each night they walk along trails, streams and old roads, covering several kilometers. Adults are solitary and territorial. A male's territory is larger than a female's and overlaps those of two or more females, while territories of the same sex barely overlap. Territory size varies a lot with prey and habitat, from a couple of square kilometers in rich tropical forest to more than ten in drier areas. Ocelots mark their ground with urine sprays, scratches on trees and shared latrines, spots where several animals leave their droppings again and again, which work like message boards. Fights between males can be serious and sometimes fatal. Ocelots are good climbers and strong swimmers, and they cross rivers without hesitation. They communicate with meows, growls, hisses and a loud yowl during the mating season. Young males leave their mother's area at around two years old and may travel many kilometers before finding a free territory, which is when many of them die on roads.
Ocelot kittens: a slow breeding cat
Ocelots can breed at any time of year in the tropics, while in Texas and northern Mexico most kittens are born in fall and spring. A female comes into heat for a few days, and the male and female stay together only briefly to mate. After a pregnancy of about 79 to 85 days, she gives birth in a well hidden den, such as a hollow log, a cave, a tangle of roots or a thicket of thorny brush. A litter usually has just one kitten, sometimes two and very rarely three. The kittens are born with their eyes closed, weighing around 250 grams, and they already have the spotted pattern, though darker and grayer than an adult's. Their eyes open at about two weeks, and the mother moves them between dens to keep them safe. They start to eat meat at around six weeks and to follow their mother on short trips at about three months. They are independent at around one year, but may stay in their mother's range for up to two years before leaving. Because a female usually raises only one litter every two years, ocelots reproduce much more slowly than other cats of similar size, which makes it hard for small populations, like the one in Texas, to recover from losses.
Can you have an ocelot as a pet?
Ocelots were fashionable exotic pets in the 1960s and 1970s. The painter Salvador Dalí was famously photographed with his ocelot, Babou, and thousands of kittens were sold in the United States and Europe. Most were taken from the wild, often by killing the mother, and the trade added to the pressure from the fur industry. The reality of keeping one is very different from the pictures. An ocelot is a wild predator that grows to the size of a medium dog, with strong jaws and claws. It marks its space with strong smelling urine, is most active at night, needs a large, secure enclosure and a diet of whole prey, and can become aggressive as it matures. Many pet ocelots ended up abandoned or in sanctuaries. Today the international commercial trade in wild ocelots is banned under Appendix I of CITES, and in the United States the species is protected as Endangered, so keeping one requires special permits that are rarely granted. In most Latin American countries capturing or selling ocelots is illegal. Seeing them in the wild, in places like the Pantanal or Corcovado, or supporting groups that protect their forests, is the way to enjoy these cats without harming them.
Are ocelots endangered?
Globally, no. The IUCN lists the ocelot as Least Concern, in an assessment made on 10 May 2014 and published in 2015, but it also says the population is decreasing and marks the assessment as needing an update. The picture changes a lot from place to place. The ocelot was hit hard by the fur trade: in the 1960s and 1970s, hundreds of thousands of skins were sold each year, until international commercial trade was banned and the species was placed on Appendix I of CITES. Many populations have recovered since then, and ocelots are still common in large forests of the Amazon, the Pantanal and the Maya Forest. Today the main threats are the loss and fragmentation of forest to cattle ranching, soy and other crops, road deaths, and killing by farmers after ocelots take chickens. In the United States, the ocelot has been listed as Endangered since 1982. Fewer than 100 survive in South Texas, split between the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge and private ranches in Willacy and Kenedy counties, and cars cause around 40 percent of known deaths at Laguna Atascosa. Wildlife crossings under roads, restoration of thorn scrub and plans to link the Texas cats with Mexican populations are the keys to keeping them there.
Where it is found
The Ocelot can be found in places such as:
