Ocelot

• 1. Introduction

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  A diner at a New York restaurant once grew alarmed by the ocelot sitting beside Salvador Dalí. The painter kept the cat as a pet named Babou, and it went with him to many places, including a voyage aboard the SS France. To calm the frightened diner, Dalí said it was only a common domestic cat that he had "painted over in an op art design". The joke worked because the ocelot's coat really does look painted. Yet the animal wearing it is a solitary wild cat of the Americas, and it raises real puzzles. Why does its name seem to belong to a different cat? How many kinds of ocelot exist? How does a night hunter divide up a forest with its neighbours? And how did a species with such an enormous range come to dwindle in parts of it?

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• 2. Names and Lineage

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  The word ocelot comes from the Nahuatl ōcēlōtl, yet in that language the term generally refers to the jaguar rather than the ocelot. Another possible source is the Latin ocellatus, which means having little eyes or marked with eye-like spots. That description suits a spotted coat well.

  Across the Americas the cat has gathered dozens of local names. Venezuelans say cunaguaro, Argentines say gato onza, and in Suriname it is heitigrikati. Brazilians say jaguatirica or maracaja. Manigordo is used in Costa Rica, Panama and Venezuela. Tigrillo is the word in Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru, while in Belize it is the tiger cat and in Bolivia the tigrecillo.

  The scientific name came from Carl Linnaeus, who proposed Felis pardalis in 1758. In 1842 John Edward Gray created the genus Leopardus to hold several spotted cat skins in the collection of the Natural History Museum in London. Over the next century, naturalists kept describing new ocelot specimens as if each were a new animal. Frédéric Cuvier named Felis mitis in 1824 from a specimen from Rio de Janeiro. Pierre Boitard's version in 1845 was based on an ocelot kept in the Jardin des plantes. Edgar Alexander Mearns described a skin of an adult female from Talamanca canton in Costa Rica in 1903. Oldfield Thomas described a skin and skull from Guayas Province in coastal Ecuador in 1914. Reginald Innes Pocock added a specimen from Buena Vista, Ichilo in Bolivia in 1941.

  Someone then had to sort the pile. In 1919 Joel Asaph Allen reviewed the specimens described up to 1914 and accepted nine subspecies, judging by the colours and spot patterns of skins. In 1941 Pocock went through dozens of skins at the Natural History Museum and regrouped them into nine subspecies by the same measures. Later authors accepted ten.

  Genetics shook up that picture. A 1998 analysis of mitochondrial DNA found four major groups: Central America, northwestern South America, northeastern South America, and South America south of the Amazon River. A 2010 study found significant differences in size and colour between Central and South American ocelots, and suggested they might be separate species. A 2013 study of skull measurements and microsatellite diversity recognised three subspecies. One lived along the Texas-Mexico border, one in Central America, and one in South America.

  In 2017 the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group said up to four subspecies could be identified but recognised only two. The Andes separate them. Leopardus pardalis pardalis has greyish fur and ranges from Texas and Arizona to Costa Rica. Leopardus pardalis mitis is yellowish and larger, and lives in South America as far south as northern Argentina.

  One molecular study dates the split between the Leopardus lineage and the rest of the cat family to around 8 million years ago. It places the ocelot's separation from the margay between 2.41 and 1.01 million years ago.

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• 3. Spots and Size

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  A creamy, tawny, yellowish, reddish gray or gray backdrop carries the ocelot's solid black markings. Spots on the head and limbs are small. On the back, cheeks and flanks they stretch into open or closed bands and stripes. A few dark stripes run straight from the back of the neck to the tip of the tail. The neck and underside are white, the inner legs show a few horizontal streaks, and each round ear carries a bright white spot.

  Because every ocelot has a unique pattern, individual animals can be told apart by their coats. The fur itself is short, about 0.8 cm long on the belly, with guard hairs of about 1 cm on the back. The body has a notably strong odor. The eyes are brown but flash golden when light hits them. The cat has 28 to 30 teeth, and its bite force quotient at the canine tip is 113.8.

  Head and body together measure 55 to 100 cm, and the tail adds 30 to 45 cm, which makes the ocelot the largest member of the genus Leopardus. At the shoulder it stands 40 to 50 cm. Females weigh 7 to 12 kg and males 8 to 18 kg. Each paw leaves a print of nearly 5 by 5 cm.

  Two smaller relatives invite confusion. The margay and the oncilla both have rosettes too, but the ocelot is noticeably larger and heavier with a shorter tail. Its pattern is typically more blotched. The oncilla alone has dark spots on its underbelly. Size alone would not separate an ocelot from a bobcat, though larger ocelots have occasionally been recorded. The jaguar is far bigger and heavier, with rosettes instead of spots and stripes.

  In the wild, the ocelot shares much of its range with the jaguar, the jaguarundi, the margay, the oncilla and the cougar.

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• 4. Territory and Range

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  The ocelot's range stretches from the southwestern United States to northern Argentina, reaching elevations of 3000 m. It also lives on the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Margarita. In the United States it occurs in Texas and Arizona, and it has disappeared from Louisiana and Arkansas. Ocelot fossils have turned up in Florida.

  Tropical forests, thorn forests, mangrove swamps and savannas all count as home. In the Amazon rainforest the cat favours places with plenty of prey and water, and it keeps away from other predators. Dense cover and water sources matter most. It stays far from roads and human settlement and avoids steep, high ground. Where cougars and people share its habitat, it shifts its active hours and hides in thick vegetation.

  At the Cocha Cashu Biological Station in Peru, radio-collared ocelots rested through the day. They became active in the late afternoon and moved for between 3.2 and 17 hours before dawn, then returned to their dens. By day an ocelot rests in trees, in dens beneath large trees, or in other cool, sheltered spots on the ground. It climbs and leaps with ease, and it escapes predators by jumping into trees. It also swims well.

  The cat marks its territory by spraying urine. Male territories cover 3.5-46 square kilometres, while female ranges cover 0.8-15 square kilometres. Female territories rarely overlap, but one male's territory takes in those of two to three females. Camera traps show that several ocelots may leave scat at shared sites called latrines. Even so, the species is territorial, and fights over land can end in death. Adults can fall prey to cougars and jaguars. In Guatemala, shrinking water sources have forced encounters with jaguars.

  Population density climbs where rainfall is high and falls with distance from the tropics. In 2014 the estimate for Barro Colorado Island was 1.59-1.74 ocelots per square kilometre. That topped the figure of 0.984 recorded in the northwestern Amazon of Peru in 2010, which had been the densest ocelot population recorded.

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• 5. The Night Hunt

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  An ocelot following a scent trail may creep along at about 0.3 km/h. If it prefers to ambush, it waits at one spot for 30 to 60 minutes. When nothing comes, it moves on at 0.8-1.4 km/h. It hunts under vegetation cover and avoids open ground, especially on moonlit nights, so that prey cannot see it coming.

  The menu runs from rodents, rabbits and hares to armadillos and opossums. Fish, crustaceans, insects, reptiles and birds are also taken. Most prey weighs under 1 kg. The cat usually eats right at the kill, but it plucks the feathers off a bird first. A day's energy needs come to 600-800 g of food.

  Diet shifts with place and season. Primates dominate the diet of ocelots in southeastern Brazil, and iguanas do in a tropical deciduous forest in Mexico. In Venezuela, ocelots eat iguanas and rodents in the dry season and switch to land crabs in the wet season. In the Atlantic rainforest, their tastes resemble those of margays and oncillas. In the Cerrado, one ocelot was recorded dragging a dead calf.

  Large animals such as deer, sheep and peccaries are rarely targeted.

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• 6. Kittens and Dens

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  In the mating season both male and female ocelots give a long-range "yowl", and at close range they make a short "meow". Breeding can happen in any month. Peaks come in autumn in Argentina and Paraguay, and in autumn and winter in Mexico and Texas. Estrus lasts four to five days and returns every 25 days in a female that is not pregnant. In southern Brazil, sperm production in ocelots, margays and oncillas peaks in summer. Captive pairs spend more time together when mating, scent-mark heavily and eat less.

  Both sexes mature at around two years of age. After two to three months of gestation the female bears one to three kittens in a den, usually in dense vegetation. A newborn weighs 200-340 g. It has spots and stripes already, but on a gray background that turns golden with age. A study in southern Texas found that a mother keeps her litter in a den for 13 to 64 days and moves the young among two or three dens. The kitten's eyes open 15 to 18 days after birth.

  Kittens start leaving the den at three months. They stay with their mother for up to two years, then disperse to establish territories of their own. Compared with other felids, ocelots have a longer gap between births and a narrow litter size. Captive ocelots can live up to 20 years.

  In Texas, the list of possible predators of kittens is long. It includes people, cougars, coyotes, American alligators, great horned owls, bobcats, feral dogs, feral pigs, pit vipers and constrictor snakes.

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• 7. Fur, Pets, and Roads

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  In 1970, trade in ocelot skins in the United States hit an all-time high of 140,000. The fur trade boomed through the 1960s and 1970s and badly exploited felids such as the ocelot and the jaguar. Ocelot skins ranked among the most sought after in the United States. Brazil and the United States then banned commercial trade in spotted cat skins, among other range states, and skins in trade plummeted. In 1986 the European Economic Community banned imports of ocelot skins. In 1989 the ocelot was placed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Hunting for skins has nonetheless continued and remains a major threat.

  The pet trade is another. Dealers typically capture kittens by killing their mothers, then sell the young to tourists. Several countries ban the practice, but a few local markets in Central and South America still sell ocelots.

  Habitat loss does the slower damage. In Texas, the fertile land that gives ocelots their best dense cover is being lost to agriculture. What remains is cut into small pockets that cannot support the cats well, and animals starve. Traffic has become a major danger as ocelots push into new areas and are hit by vehicles. In the Atlantic Forest of northeastern Argentina, logging and poaching of prey species weigh on the cat. Only one ocelot is known to have albinism, and that rare trait probably signals shrinking populations from deforestation.

  Still, the IUCN lists the ocelot as Least Concern because it is so widely distributed. Hunting is banned in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, French Guiana, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela. Peru regulates it. As of 2013, the global population was put at more than 40,000 mature individuals. Some Amazon basin populations were stable that year. In 2012, Argentina's subtropical regions were estimated to hold 1,500 to 8,000 mature ocelots. Ocelots have been recorded in oil palm landscapes and on big cattle ranches in the Colombian Llanos and the inter-Andean valleys.

  Texas tells a harder story. In Texas and northeastern Mexico the numbers have fallen sharply, and the 2014 estimate for Texas was 50-80 individuals. The small population has suffered inbreeding and low genetic diversity. The US Fish and Wildlife Service did not accept the Texas ocelots as a distinct population segment worthy of listing as endangered. That agency, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and The Nature Conservancy are still working to protect and regrow vegetation in the Rio Grande Valley, and much of the reintroduction work is happening on private land. NatureServe rates the ocelot apparently secure globally but critically imperiled in Texas and Arizona.

  Zoos have a role too. The American Zoo and Aquarium Association set up a Species Survival Plan for the ocelot populations in Brazil. In 2006 the captive population in North American zoos stood at 16 ocelots, representing six founders and their offspring, and some litters were produced by artificial insemination. The Emperor Valley Zoo in Trinidad keeps mainly confiscated and trapped ocelots.

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• 8. Cats in Culture

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  Moche ceramics are among the places where Andean artists showed the ocelot, which appears in every artistic medium from murals to architectural details and landscape features. The Aztec and Incan civilizations depicted ocelots in their art and mythology. Ocelot bones were shaped into thin, pointed tools used to pierce ears and limbs for ritual bloodletting. Several figurines show ocelots and similar felids.

  In 1904 the archaeologist Zelia Nuttall published A Penitential Rite of the Ancient Mexicans. In it she described a statue found in Mexico City, showing an ocelot or another felid, and linked it to the Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca. She argued that it depicted an ocelot and cited a myth in which Tezcatlipoca was cast down from heaven by Quetzalcoatl and "fell into the water where he transformed himself into an ocelot" and arose to kill certain giants. She also pointed to a photograph of a seated figure with an ocelot head and a spotted ocelot skin hanging behind his back. The late Senor Islas de Bustamante had independently labelled it "Ocelotl-Tezcatlipoca", or in Nuttall's gloss, the Lord Ocelot.

  Ocelots have also been kept as pets, as many other felids are. They can demand a lot of attention. They tend to chew or suck on fabric and on their owners' fingers, and this can lead them to swallow objects such as tennis balls. Agile and playful, they leap around and may damage belongings, and their bites can accidentally injure owners. Even so, carefully raised ocelots can be highly affectionate.

  Opera singer Lily Pons and musician Gram Parsons are also known to have kept ocelots.

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