Ocelot

About the ocelot

The ocelot is a medium-sized spotted wild cat, and the largest member of its genus, Leopardus. Carl Linnaeus first described the species in 1758, naming it Felis pardalis; it was later moved into its own genus by John Edward Gray in 1842. Two broad groups are recognized today, separated by the Andes: Leopardus pardalis pardalis, greyish and ranging from Texas and Arizona down to Costa Rica, and L. p. mitis, more yellowish and larger, found through South America as far south as northern Argentina.

Its fur runs from creamy to tawny, reddish-gray, or gray, marked with solid black spots on the head and limbs and open or closed bands and stripes across the back, cheeks, and flanks. 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 insides of the legs carry a few horizontal streaks, and the round ears each show a bright white spot on the back. Every ocelot's markings are unique enough to identify the individual. The eyes are brown but flash gold when lit at night, and the body carries a notably strong odor. An ocelot can be confused at a glance with the smaller margay or oncilla, or with a bobcat of similar size, but it's built heavier, with a shorter tail and a more blotched coat pattern than either of its smaller relatives.

The ocelot ranges from the southwestern United States to northern Argentina, at elevations up to 3,000 m (9,800 ft). In the U.S. it survives in Texas and Arizona, though it has been extirpated from Louisiana and Arkansas; fossils turn up in Florida. It favors tropical forests, thorn forests, mangrove swamps, and savannas, and within those habitats it seeks out dense vegetation close to water and away from roads or human settlement, avoiding steep slopes and high elevations. Across much of its range it shares territory with jaguars, jaguarundis, margays, oncillas, and cougars, adjusting its active hours to avoid the larger cats.

Behavior and diet

The ocelot is solitary, territorial, and active mainly at twilight and at night. By day it rests in trees, in dens beneath large trees, or in other sheltered spots on the ground; radio-collared ocelots studied in Peru moved for 3.2 to 17 hours between dusk and dawn before returning to their dens. It is an agile climber and leaper — capable of escaping predators by bounding into trees — and an efficient swimmer besides. Males hold territories of 3.5 to 46 km² (1.4–17.8 sq mi), several times larger than the 0.8 to 15 km² (0.31–5.79 sq mi) held by females; a male's range typically overlaps those of two or three females, whose own territories rarely overlap each other. Ocelots scent-mark with urine and use shared latrine sites, and they can fight to the death defending their ground.

Hunting, an ocelot tracks prey by scent, walking at roughly 0.3 km/h (0.2 mph), or waits at a promising spot for 30 to 60 minutes before moving on, avoiding open, moonlit ground so prey won't spot it coming. Rodents, lagomorphs, armadillos, and opossums make up the bulk of the diet, supplemented with fish, crustaceans, insects, reptiles, and birds; it plucks the feathers off birds before eating but otherwise feeds immediately on a kill. Most prey weighs under 1 kg (2.2 lb), though an ocelot needs 600 to 800 g (21–28 oz) of food a day. Diet shifts with location and season — primates dominate in southeastern Brazil, iguanas in a Mexican deciduous forest, and in Venezuela ocelots switch from iguanas and rodents in the dry season to land crabs once the rains arrive.

Ocelots can breed year-round, with peak mating season varying by region — autumn in Argentina and Paraguay, autumn and winter in Mexico and Texas. Both sexes reach sexual maturity around two years old. A female's estrus lasts four to five days and recurs every 25 days if she doesn't conceive. After a two- to three-month gestation, she gives birth to one to three kittens in a den set in dense vegetation; a Texas study found mothers keep a litter in one den for 13 to 64 days before shifting them between two or three sites. Kittens are born spotted and striped on a gray background that turns golden as they mature, open their eyes at 15 to 18 days, and start leaving the den around three months old. They stay with their mother for up to two years before dispersing to establish their own territory.

Range and habitat

The ocelot's range stretches from the southwestern United States — Texas and Arizona, with the species now gone from Louisiana and Arkansas — down through Mexico, Central America, and South America to northern Argentina, plus the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Margarita. It occurs up to 3,000 m (9,800 ft) in elevation and inhabits tropical forests, thorn forests, mangrove swamps, and savannas.

Within that range, ocelots gravitate toward dense forest cover near water, and away from roads, human settlements, steep slopes, and high elevations. In the Amazon rainforest they favor spots with plentiful prey and water while steering clear of other predators. Population density runs highest in the tropics and in areas with heavy rainfall, and falls off with increasing latitude; the densest population recorded, on Panama's Barro Colorado Island, was estimated at 1.59 to 1.74 animals per km² (4.1–4.5 per sq mi) in 2014.

Conservation status

The ocelot is listed as Least Concern (LC) on the IUCN Red List, largely because of how widely it's distributed across the Americas — the global population was estimated at more than 40,000 mature individuals as of 2013. That broad range masks declines in specific areas: the species is threatened by habitat destruction and fragmentation, traffic accidents as ocelots push into new areas cut through by roads, and, in northeastern Argentina's Atlantic Forest, logging and the poaching of the animals it preys on.

Hunting for the fur trade devastated ocelot numbers through the 1960s and 1970s, peaking at 140,000 skins traded in 1970 before bans on the commercial trade of spotted-cat skins took hold in Brazil, the U.S., and elsewhere; the ocelot was added to CITES Appendix I in 1989. Hunting for skins persists in some areas despite these protections, and so does the international pet trade, which typically involves killing a kitten's mother to capture it for sale. Today, ocelot hunting is banned across most of its range, including the United States.