EN DPAPER 



T 



he first time my col- 

 leagues and I captured 

 Bobby, an oversize ocelot, 

 I knew he was the local king. At 

 thirty-four pounds, he was the 

 largest ocelot we had ever seen — 

 and certainly the largest on Pana- 

 ma's Barro Colorado Island (BCI). 

 It was clear he was a fighter, fresh 

 from battle — and not 

 against some easy, smaller 

 prey, but with other, 

 fearsome ocelots. These 

 predators often rely on 

 size and strong, sharp 

 teeth to defend turf and 

 establish social rank. 

 Many of Bobby's battle 

 wounds came from an 

 ocelot's bites; he had 

 tooth marks on his fore- 

 head, two punctures in 

 his chest, and a deep gash 

 across his left nostril. 

 Ricardo S. Moreno, now 

 a graduate student in 

 wildlife ecology at the 

 University of Costa Rica, 

 was my trap-and-release 

 partner that day. "I'd hate to see the 

 other guy," he quipped. 



Later that year Ricardo did see the 

 other guy. Ricardo was out one night, 

 radio-tracking a male ocelot some 

 years younger than Bobby. Just as Ri- 

 cardo crested a hill, he caught the 

 very end of an ocelot fight. Bobby 

 was standing unfazed in the nuddle of 

 the trail, while "the other guy" was 

 tumbling down a hillside. Then, with 

 a glance back at the slack-jawed Ri- 

 cardo, Bobby sauntered leisurely 

 down the trail. The King was at the 

 top of his game. 



For the next two years we tracked 

 Bobby with various equipment, old 

 and new. He covered more than three 

 and a half square miles on his nightly 

 patrols — -just over half the island. 

 Once, we inadvertently caught Bobby 

 in a trap intended for a puma, baited 

 with a red brocket deer that we pre- 

 sumed had been killed by the puma 

 the night before. Finding Bobby in 



My Kingdom 

 for a Crown 



By Roland W. Kays 



only does a broken canine com- 

 promise defense, but it also 

 makes it much harder to get the 

 next meal. That may have been 

 what led to Bobby's demise. 



Three and a half years after our 

 first encounter with Bobby, we 

 round his rotting remains being 

 pecked at by a king vulture. His 

 canines were reduced 

 to broken stubs with 

 exposed-pulp cavities 

 that held arteries and 

 nerves. Ellis J. Neiburger, 

 a forensic dentist based 

 near Chicago, noted that 

 Bobby's exposed pulp 

 "would hurt and make 

 this critter rather nasty in 

 temperament." Certainly 



Stalking the forest at night, an ocelot searches for a meal 

 (above). Turf battles with other ocelots or tussles with prey 

 severely damaged Bobby's canine teeth (skull at right); the 

 broken canines may have led to his demise. 



the trap was a shock, but it did allow 

 us to check his weight and replace his 

 radio collar before its batteries ran 

 down. We were stunned by his new 

 weight: forty-one pounds. That made 

 Bobby the largest ocelot in the 

 world — now or ever, as far as we can 

 determine from museum records and 

 published studies. 



Carnivores lead bloody lives, 

 killing every time they need a 

 snack. So it's no surprise their aggres- 

 sions spill into their social lives as 

 well. All fifteen ocelots we have cap- 

 tured on BCI have had battle scars, 

 even the females; the worst case was 

 a male that had lost his left ear. Most 

 flesh wounds heal, but broken 

 teeth — another fight casualty — do 

 not. Canine teeth can break in fights 

 with other ocelots, or while the ani- 

 mal is trying to catch prey, such as 

 agoutis or sloths; broken teeth are 

 common in all older carnivores. Not 



his stubs would have done little for 

 him in dominance battles. Bobby 

 probably stumbled from his social 

 throne before he ended up in the 

 streambed where we found him dead. 



I picked Bobby up, wrapped him 

 in wire mesh, and buried his carcass 

 under leaf litter to let the insects clean 

 the bones. I realized that Bobby had 

 claimed a special place in my memory 

 with his ferocity and strength, even 

 though some new animal had already 

 claimed the role of top ocelot. But 

 would the other BCI cats miss Bobby, 

 or celebrate his reign? Apparently not. 

 When I went back to retrieve his 

 cleaned bones, I found that another 

 ocelot had paid final respects ... by 

 depositing scat on top of Bobby's 

 bones. It's not easy being king. 



Roland IV Kays is the curator of mammals 

 at the New York State Museum in Albany, 

 and a research associate at the Smithsonian 

 Tropical Research Institute in Panama. 



NATURAl HISTORY May 2006 



