Ocelot

Name and taxonomy

The name comes from the Nahuatl word ocelotl, which in Aztec usage usually meant the jaguar rather than this cat. Another suggested root is the Latin ocellatus, marked with little eyes, for the spotted coat. Local names include tigrillo in Colombia and Peru, jaguatirica in Brazil, cunaguaro in Venezuela and manigordo, big feet, in Costa Rica and Panama. Linnaeus named the cat Felis pardalis in 1758. John Edward Gray set up the genus Leopardus in 1842 for a set of spotted skins in London.

Naturalists once split the species into nine or ten subspecies on the colour and spotting of skins. A 1998 study of mitochondrial DNA found four main groups: Central America, north-western, north-eastern and southern South America. In 2017 the IUCN Cat Specialist Group accepted just two subspecies, split by the Andes. L. p. pardalis is greyer and ranges from Texas and Arizona to Costa Rica. L. p. mitis is larger and yellower and lives in South America south to northern Argentina.

Evolution and relatives

The Leopardus line branched off from the rest of the cat family about 8 million years ago. The ocelot and the margay parted between 2.41 and 1.01 million years ago. Fossil ocelots have turned up in Florida, well beyond the modern range. The genus appears to be the main radiation of small cats in South America. It includes the oncilla, Geoffroy's cat and the Andean cat.

The ocelot shares its range with the jaguar, cougar, jaguarundi, margay and oncilla. It is easy to confuse with the margay and the oncilla. It is clearly bigger, with a shorter tail and blotches rather than neat rosettes. It is about the size of a bobcat, and the jaguar is far larger.

Appearance

Head and body measure 55 to 100 centimetres, and the tail adds 30 to 45 cm. Shoulder height is 40 to 50 cm. Females weigh 7 to 12 kilograms and males 8 to 18 kg, so the sexes differ clearly in size. The paws are large for the body, and the front paws are broader than the hind ones. A footprint measures close to 5 by 5 cm.

The coat is cream, tawny, reddish grey or grey, and it is covered in solid black markings. Spots on the head and legs are small, while the back, cheeks and flanks carry open or closed bands and stripes in chains. Several dark stripes run from the neck along the back to the tail. The neck and underside are white, each round ear bears a white spot, and two black lines cross each cheek. No two ocelots share the same pattern, and cats from dry scrub are greyer than cats from wet forest.

The fur is short, about 0.8 cm on the belly and 1 cm on the back, and it carries a strong smell. The eyes are brown and shine gold in a torch beam. There are 28 to 30 teeth, and only one albino ocelot has ever been recorded. Black ocelots occur but are rare.

Habitat and range

The ocelot ranges from Texas and Arizona to northern Argentina, and it has been recorded up to 3,000 metres. It once lived in Louisiana and Arkansas but is gone from both. Central America holds the densest populations, with further clusters in north-western, north-eastern and central southern South America. GBIF holds records from 33 countries.

It lives in tropical forest, thorn forest, mangrove swamp, marsh and savanna. The one thing it needs is thick cover, and it crosses open ground only on cloudy or moonless nights. In the Amazon it picks places with plenty of prey and water and keeps away from roads, settlements and steep slopes. Where cougars or people are common, it shifts its active hours to avoid them. Most ocelots live below 1,200 m, although one was seen at 3,800 m.

Density is highest in wet tropical forest and falls toward the north and south. On Barro Colorado Island in Panama it reached 1.59 to 1.74 cats per square kilometre in 2014, the highest ever recorded. In the Colombian Llanos, ocelots persist on oil palm estates and large cattle ranches.

Diet and hunting

The ocelot is a strict carnivore that takes prey mostly under 1 kilogram. Small rodents make up about 65 to 66% of the diet and reptiles 12 to 18%. Medium mammals add 6 to 10%, birds 4 to 11%, and crabs and fish 2 to 7%. Cane mice, spiny rats, agoutis, opossums and armadillos are the staple, most of them active at night. Now and then it takes a deer, a peccary, an anteater, a monkey, a tortoise or an iguana. In south-eastern Brazil monkeys lead the diet, and in dry forest in Mexico iguanas do. In Venezuela the dry season diet is iguanas and rodents, and the wet season diet is land crabs.

An ocelot hunts by scent, walking a trail at about 0.3 kilometres per hour. Or it waits at one spot for 30 to 60 minutes, then moves on at 0.8 to 1.4 km/h. It makes about 0.9 kills per kilometre travelled. It eats at the kill, plucks a bird before eating it, and covers what it leaves. It needs 600 to 800 grams of meat a day. It hunts inside cover and avoids open ground on bright nights so that prey does not see it coming.

Behaviour and social life

The ocelot lives alone and is active at twilight and through the night. Radio-collared cats in Peru rested by day and set out in the late afternoon. They moved for 3.2 to 17 hours before returning to a den at dawn. It is active for more than 12 hours a day and covers 1.8 to 6.7 km, with males travelling nearly twice as far as females. By day it sleeps in a tree, a hollow, a den under roots or a patch of thick brush. It climbs well, leaps into trees to escape a predator, and swims without trouble.

Males hold territories of 3.5 to 46 square kilometres, and females 0.8 to 15 km2. A male's range takes in the ranges of two or three females, while female ranges rarely overlap. Both sexes mark with sprayed urine, and several cats use shared latrines. Fights over territory can end in death. Adults have little to do with each other outside mating, although a few pairs have been seen together and young cats sometimes meet their parents.

Communication and senses

The ocelot has keen sight and smell. Its eyes give sharp binocular vision for hunting in the dark, and they shine gold when lit. It finds, tracks and stalks prey by scent, and it reads territory borders the same way.

Scent is the main signal between cats: sprayed urine, scat left at latrines, and rubbing. Both sexes give a long-range yowl in the mating season, much like a domestic cat, and a short mew close up. Captive pairs that are courting scent-mark heavily, spend more time together and eat less. The white ear spots and cheek stripes probably help cats read each other at close range, as with other spotted cats.

Reproduction and life cycle

Ocelots can mate in any month. Births peak in autumn in Argentina and Paraguay and in autumn and winter in Mexico and Texas. Oestrus lasts four to five days and returns every 25 days if the female does not conceive. Captive pairs mate 5 to 10 times a day during that window. The system is polygynous: one male covers the ranges of several females.

After 79 to 85 days the female bears one to three kittens, on average 1.63, in a den hidden in dense vegetation. A newborn weighs 200 to 340 grams and is born spotted on a grey coat that turns golden with age. Its eyes open at 15 to 18 days. In Texas a mother keeps the litter in a den for 13 to 64 days and moves it between two or three dens. Kittens are weaned by 6 weeks, leave the den at three months, and reach adult size at 8 to 10 months.

The mother raises them alone, and they watch her hunt before they hunt themselves. They become independent at about a year but may stay in her range until two. Females mature at 18 to 22 months and can breed until about 13 years old, and males start producing sperm at about 30 months. A female usually raises one litter every two years, a slow rate for a cat. Wild ocelots live 7 to 10 years, and one captive cat reached 28.2.

Predators and threats

Jaguars and cougars kill adult ocelots, and in Guatemala shrinking water sources push the two cats together. Harpy eagles and anacondas also take them. In Texas the kittens face cougars, coyotes, bobcats, alligators, great horned owls, feral dogs and pigs, pit vipers and constrictors. The ocelot escapes by climbing, and its coat hides it in dappled shade.

The main threat everywhere is the loss and cutting up of habitat. In Texas the dense thorn scrub it needs is going under the plough, and cats in small patches starve. Road deaths have become a major cause of loss as young cats wander in search of new ground. In the 1960s and 1970s the fur trade hit the species hard, and 140,000 skins were traded in 1970 alone. Skins still sell illegally, and kittens are taken for the pet trade by killing the mother. Farmers kill ocelots that raid poultry where wild prey has been hunted out.

Population and conservation

The IUCN lists the ocelot as Least Concern because of its huge range. In 2013 the world population was put at more than 40,000 mature adults. One 1996 estimate ran to 1.5 to 3 million cats of all ages. Numbers are stable in parts of the Amazon basin but falling in many other regions. Argentina's subtropical forests held 1,500 to 8,000 mature cats in 2012.

Brazil and the United States banned trade in spotted cat skins in the 1970s. Europe banned imports in 1986, and CITES placed the ocelot on Appendix I in 1989. Hunting is banned in almost every range country and regulated in Peru. Texas holds only 50 to 80 ocelots, inbred and cut off, and agencies are replanting thorn scrub in the Rio Grande Valley to link them. The Texas subspecies is the only one listed as endangered. North American zoos held 16 ocelots from six founders in 2006, and some litters came from artificial insemination.

Relationship with humans

For twenty years from the early 1960s, spotted cat fur was high fashion. An ocelot coat sold for 40,000 dollars in West Germany, and a live kitten fetched 800 dollars as a pet. The trade nearly emptied whole regions, and alarm over the ocelot helped bring about CITES in 1975. Ocelot skins and pets can still be found in some Central and South American markets.

Alive, the ocelot keeps down rodents that damage crops, and it rarely troubles people. It does kill chickens where its wild prey is gone. As a pet it demands attention, chews and sucks on cloth and fingers, leaps about and can swallow objects such as tennis balls. Salvador Dali travelled with an ocelot named Babou and once told a worried diner it was a house cat painted in op art. The singer Lily Pons and the musician Gram Parsons also kept ocelots.

In culture and myth

Ocelots appear in Moche pottery, in murals, and in carved stone across ancient Mexico and Peru. Aztec priests sharpened ocelot bones into points for piercing ears and limbs in blood offerings. In a 1904 study, the archaeologist Zelia Nuttall tied a felid statue from Mexico City to the god Tezcatlipoca. In the myth she cited, Tezcatlipoca fell from heaven into the sea, became an ocelot, and rose to kill the giants. She also described a seated figure wearing an ocelot skin and leggings as Lord Ocelot, a form of the same god.

In Nahuatl, ocelotl meant the jaguar and its warrior order, so Aztec ocelot lore is partly jaguar lore under a borrowed name. Modern symbolism blogs link the cat to the Maya moon goddess Ixchel, but the claim seems to have no ancient source. The same sites read the ocelot as a messenger between worlds and a sign of stealth, night and the defence of territory.