- The ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) is often overlooked because it shares much of its American range with its more charismatic larger cousin, the jaguar. Recently, scientists discovered some surprising behaviors in this versatile small feline — including a tendency to hang out with opossums.
- In Mexico, the ocelot is classified as an endangered species due to habitat loss and hunting. A relatively new threat is climate change, as longer dry periods force the small cat to approach human settlements in search of water.
- NGOs in Mexico are working to end community-wildlife conflicts and promote peaceful coexistence between humans and ocelots. Projects conducted with beekeepers, farmers, schoolchildren and pet owners help achieve that goal.
- One lesson learned: There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Each community needs a tailored approach, ranging from building specially designed water troughs, painting school murals with kids, helping farmers construct ocelot-proof chicken cages, to free vaccination and sterilization programs for dogs and cats.
CONHUAS, Mexico — Esteban Dominguez has lived for more than 20 years close to one of the biggest conservation areas in southeastern Mexico — Calakmul Biosphere Reserve on the Yucatán Peninsula. He’s used to spotting monkeys, coatis, eagles, tapirs, deer, wild turkeys, owls, and even pumas and jaguars. But he recalls only a couple times when an ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) briefly crossed his path.
“They are smaller, harder to see, and disappear much faster than jaguars,” he says.
But Dominguez has hard evidence that these small cats with their characteristic spotted coats live in the reserve and its surroundings. “I have set up and monitored 28 camera-trap stations for different researchers since 2014, and there are always photos of ocelots on each camera,” he says. Mostly, these images are accidental, termed “bycatch” by scientists and NGOs that primarily monitor for more charismatic species like jaguars (Panthera onca) or pumas (Puma concolor).
The 35-year-old Dominguez was originally a farmer, but his passion is nature, and over the years he has turned into a citizen scientist, aiding biologists, guiding tourists, and teaching his community in the village of Conhuas about environmental protection.
“This is very important as we live in the buffer zone of the national park,” he says. The village’s location in the rainforest is beautiful, but also challenging for its 800 inhabitants, most of them settlers from other parts of Mexico who arrived in the 1980s, well before Calakmul was declared a biosphere reserve in 1989.
Those settlers first tried to make a living from agriculture, but the soil here is poor and rocky, not suited to most crops. Then they tried cattle ranching, but this was also challenging: Watering cattle was hard, as there are no rivers and almost no permanent lagoons in the Calakmul region, and temperatures can reach 37° Celsius (nearly 100° Fahrenheit) — not the ideal conditions for cows. Smaller livestock such as sheep and goats, meanwhile, were often attacked by wildcats.
A particular problem then and now are pumas, which often kill dozens of animals at a time, especially when teaching their offspring to hunt. “Look, these are remains of a fence from that time of cattle!” Dominguez says, pointing from his old pickup truck’s window. He’s driving toward what turned out ultimately to be the most sustainable and lucrative income source for the community: Bees.
Water conflicts: Bees vs. ocelots
Mexico is one of the world’s leading producers and exporters of honey. In 2024, the country provided around 58,033 metric tons and earned about $42 million from exports, mainly to the U.S. and Europe. The Yucatán Peninsula is the heartland of Mexico’s beekeepers.
Dominguez himself has a dozen beehives — and he also has a problem: Bees need water, and as there are no lakes or rivers in this part of the Yucatán, he had to bring water barrels from the village to the forest. But during the dry season, these barrels also attract many wild animals. Larger species, such as ocelots, knock the barrels over to get at the water.
This greatly annoyed the beekeepers.
That’s where Carlos Delgado, a biologist at Mexico’s National Autonomous University comes into the story. He arrived in Conhuas in 2023. Known for his study of animal behavior around water sources, Delgado had been contacted by the Ocelot Working Group (OWG) and tasked with finding a solution for the conflict between ocelots and beekeepers.
The OWG is a network of conservationists, researchers and enthusiasts committed to the conservation of ocelots, margays (Leopardus wiedii) and jaguarundis (Herpailurus yagouaroundi), mainly in Mexico and Central America. The organization, founded in 2016, promotes conservation actions and alliances to mitigate threats faced by these often ignored small cats. OWG’s projects are grounded in local community collaborations and promote peaceful coexistence between people and wildlife.
Delgado played a peacemaker role with his proposal to set up 5,000-liter (1,320-gallon) tanks to collect rainwater during the Yucatán’s rainy season. A few meters away, plastic troughs are sunk into the ground. Each holds about 120 l (32 gal) and they’re connected to the big tanks via a slightly sloping hose. When beekeepers make their routine rounds of the beehives and see empty troughs, they simply open the tank tap — gravity does the rest of the work.
“We have installed 13 such water-collecting systems in the region,” Delgado says as he joins Dominguez in digging a hole in which to embed a new plastic trough.
“At first, it was a bit difficult to convince people to try out this technique,” Delgado remembers. “But once the first units were successfully working, everybody wanted one.” Still, there are financial challenges: The materials alone cost around $1,000 per water system. So, Delgado must carefully assess the best sites for installation.
The water-sharing plan is just part of his work. Delgado also regularly gives conservation workshops at schools to raise children’s awareness of local fauna. Particularly popular is a small comic strip produced by the OCW in which an ocelot wanders the rainforest in search of water, experiences adventures, and finally finds the water troughs.
Every two months, Delgado travels to the region and supervises the watering sites. “Even though we had a very harsh and long dry season, many of them still have some water left,” he says with apparent satisfaction during a June 2025 visit, shortly before the start of the next rainy season.
A survival artist
Delgado installs a camera trap to register wildlife comings and goings at every artificial water trough. “I have seen ocelots using them,” he says, showing me some pictures on his laptop. All these photos are shared with his colleagues in the Ocelot Working Group, including Belen Mosso, a 29-year-old biologist who has made the ocelot her specialty.
Mosso says she’s fascinated by the versatile feline. “I love how they manage to adapt to different conditions,” she says. “They are remarkable hunters. I have seen young ocelots hunting bats, and colleagues have captured images of them hunting macaws.”
During the day, ocelots mostly sleep in tree hollows or bed down in thick vegetation. They hunt from late afternoon to early morning and are opportunistic predators; they eat everything they can catch, from lizards to howler monkeys that weigh almost half as much as they do.
Ocelots hunt in trees and on the ground, and are also great swimmers, catching fish and even small caimans. This adaptability allows them to thrive in all kinds of ecosystems. Ocelots have been spotted everywhere from the arid bush savannas of Texas, to the highland lagoons near Mexico City, to the dense rainforests of the Amazon.
The species is solitary and polygynous, meaning a single male will maintain a home range overlapping those of several females. During the mating period, females attract potential mates by making loud yowls, similar to those made by domestic cats. Once pregnant, females create a den in thick brush. After 80 days, they give birth to a litter of one to three kittens, which they then raise on their own. Juvenile ocelots are weaned by six weeks and begin observing their mother during hunts. They become independent at around a year old.
Sensing hurricanes and making friends
Researchers say they love ocelots in part because of the ease by which they can recognize individuals and track them over time. The pattern of spots on each animal’s coat is unique and doesn’t change over its life. “This allows us to identify each individual and follow it around, gathering an enormous amount of data,” Mosso says.
She says she has observed some surprising behaviors by L. pardalis. “During my monitoring I realized that a few days before a hurricane hit the region, all the ocelots disappeared from my photo traps,” she recalls. “It is like they sensed a disaster was to happen.”
Recently, a research team led by behavioral ecologists from Germany’s Bielefeld University in collaboration with researchers from ETH Zurich discovered another interesting behavior: a partnership between an ocelot and an opossum (Didelphis marsupialis).
The researchers were documenting bird behaviors using camera traps. Then they watched video footage with surprise showing an ocelot and an opossum walking side by side — without any signs of aggression, fear or hunting behavior. Consulting with other researchers, they found evidence of similar ocelot interspecies behavior across four regions in the Peruvian Amazon.
In all cases, the opossum seems to take the lead, while the ocelot follows closely behind. The researchers suspect a mutual benefit behind this unusual partnership. Opossums could benefit from the protective presence of the ocelot, while the ocelot is aided in its search for food by the special characteristics of the opossum — its resistance to the venom of vipers., for example. Also conceivable is that these traveling companions generate a kind of chemical camouflage as their scents mix.
New and surprising perspectives like this on animal social behavior highlights how much remains unknown about rainforest ecosystems. “This discovery was a coincidence. It reminds us of the importance of close observation, because nature is often more complex than we think,” says Isabel Damas-Moreira, a behavioral ecologist and member of the biology faculty at Bielefeld University.
Ocelot furs are out, but trafficking isn’t over
In Mexico, the ocelot is classified as an endangered species — although there has been no national census, only local ones, and the data are fragmented. The nation’s estimated ocelot population density is 14 individuals per 100 square kilometers (about 36 per 100 square miles), which is similar to that recorded in Argentina and Guatemala, but half the average of the Amazon.
The 1960s until the mid-1980s were probably the worst period for ocelots, as there was high demand then for spotted-cat furs in Western society. During this time, a coat made of ocelot fur could sell for $40,000 in Europe.
Ocelots were also popular as exotic pets, costing as much as $800 per individual. One captive ocelot, Babou, even became famous when kept by Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. Young ocelots can be domesticated, and Dalí traveled with his around the world, sometimes posing during photo shoots with Babou. According to cat lover Dali’s testimony, the little felid was a gift from Colombia’s president in 1960.
After the 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the international trade of ocelots and their byproducts became illegal in most countries. Today, the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, lists the ocelot as a species of least concern due to its wide distribution across the Americas. But the illegal trade persists. According to official data, authorities have confiscated six ocelots in Mexico in the last 10 years.
“[F]elines are a common symbol of status for some people such as drug traffickers. That fosters illegal trade especially on the internet,” says Ericka Ceballos, an expert on international e-commerce and founder of CEWS, the CATCA Environmental and Wildlife Society. In her latest study, she found 189 ocelots, mostly cubs, offered for sale online.
“Facebook is the bestselling social media platform, followed by Instagram. But you can find them on all platforms,” Ceballos says. The illegal trade contributes to declining populations, she warns.
Sterilizing cats and dogs, educating their owners
Ocelots have few natural enemies, so most of their existential challenges come from humans. “The biggest threats for the ocelot are habitat loss, pollution, hunting and invasive species,” says Samuel Puebla, an officer with the biodiversity commission in the Mexican state of Morelos.
I meet Puebla on a hot morning in May in El Organo, a suburb of the state capital, Cuernavaca, 68 kilometers (42 miles) south of Mexico City. “The Sierra Monte Negro reserve is just 3 miles [5 km] from here,” he says, standing in a playground where a team of veterinarians is erecting a large tent. Dogs sometimes enter the reserve, he says. “This causes a series of problems: diseases, attacks, and competition for food. To mitigate the impact, we offer vaccination and sterilization.”
It’s 8 a.m. when we meet, but outside in the playground, two dozen cat and dog owners are already lined up. For this event, the state biodiversity commission partnered with the Ocelot Working Group, the municipality and volunteer vets. “Each of us has only a small budget, but working together, we can realize such actions,” says Puebla, a 33-year-old civil servant.
In line is Brenda Albarán and her dog Estrella. The white-and-brown mixed breed is on a cord leash and dozes in the shade. Despite the early hour, it’s already almost 30°C (86°F). “We adopted her two years ago. She has already had puppies twice,” Albarán says. “That’s enough for us, so we’re taking the opportunity to sterilize her.”
Like many other pet owners waiting in line, Albarán has never been to a vet before. “It is expensive,” she says, noting that she feeds Estrella leftovers and kibble, but the dog also hunts. “We leave her outside during the day, and sometimes she chases rabbits.”
Mosso, from the OWG, says she worries about roaming domestic pets like Estrella who sometimes enter the protected area, which is part of an important biological corridor connecting northern and southern Mexico. “Ocelots are very stressed out by the scent of dogs,” she says, which is probably why she hasn’t observed a wildcat for several years in Sierra Monte Negro.
As the vaccinations and spaying get underway, Mosso’s colleague, field officer Maria Garcia de Leon, picks up a megaphone and gives a short talk, explaining to pet owners why it’s important to limit the number of street dogs and cats and prevent them from entering the reserve. Kids get a free copy of the ocelot comic.
“People love their pets,” Garcia de Leon notes, “but they often just don’t know how to do things correctly. There is a lack of environmental education.” That’s why the OWG designed an education program for elementary schools and why it organizes community workshops. In 2024, more than 400 people across Mexico attended 28 workshops.
At some of these events, they painted school murals with kids; at others, they helped farmers build ocelot-proof chicken cages. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Everything starts by listening to the local community and meeting their needs.
As 1 p.m. approached, the hustle and bustle dies down in the improvised veterinary clinic; 84 cats and dogs have been sterilized and vaccinated this day. That’s good news for the wildcats inhabiting Sierra Monte Negro State Reserve. Each small act — whether installing a water trough, running a workshop, distributing an ocelot comic, or helping an owner care for a pet — adds up to a safer future for Mexico’s ocelots.
Banner image: An ocelot hiding in a tree in the Pantanal, Mato Grosso state, Brazil. Ocelots range widely, from Ssouthern Texas in the U.S., through Mexico to South America. Image by Robin Gwen Agarwal via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).
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Citations:
Delgado‐Martínez, C. M., Kolb, M., Pascual‐Ramírez, F., & Mendoza, E. (2023). Differential utilization of surface and arboreal water bodies by birds and mammals in a seasonally dry Neotropical forest in southern Mexico. Ecology and Evolution, 13(11), e10781. doi:10.1002/ece3.10781
Camerlenghi, E., Gálvez, D., Ketola, C., Piga, A., Holmes, N., Mena, J. L., … Damas‐Moreira, I. (2025). Beyond predator and prey: First evidence of an association between ocelot and opossum individuals. Ecosphere, 16(6), e70322. doi:10.1002/ecs2.70322
Mosso-Medina, B. T., Weston-Flores, M., Hurtado, C. M., García-Olaechea, Á., & Valenzuela-Galván, D. (2025). Superposición temporal entre fauna doméstica y silvestre: Un caso de estudio en un ecosistema fragmentado de México. Mammalia Aequatorialis, 7(2), 9-28. doi:10.59763/mam.aeq.v7i2.106
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