372 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 8, 1906. 
The Mexican Ocelot. 
BY HARRY H. DUNN. 
One of the most interesting animals of the 
new world, and yet one of which little seems to 
be written, even by sportsmen who have spent 
much time in Mexico and the Central American 
States, is the ocelot, the strange little spotted 
cat of the dense jungles of tropical parts of the 
two Americas. 
In traveling south through our sister republic, 
either in the interior or along the coast, one 
does not meet with much obvious animal life 
until the Sonoran Desert has been passed. This 
desert is dignified by the name of a mesa, but 
it is indescribably barren, and while there are 
doubtless many-deer in its mountains, and. I am 
told, not a few antelope on its rolling plains,' it 
is a forbidding section, and one which the hunter, 
bound for the cooler regions of the central por¬ 
tion, is likely to avoid. 
But, arrived on the Rio Balsas, or some sim¬ 
ilar stream, where the undergrowth is not too 
thick, and where wild life is sufficiently abund¬ 
ant, one will find, not only these interesting 
little cats, but an occasional jaguar, el tigre of 
the natives, as well. I speak of this stream be¬ 
cause the surveying party with which I was sup¬ 
posed to be traveling was encamped on its 
shores, about equidistant from the small villages 
of Oropco, Churumuca and Apundarox, and it 
is of this region that I am best prepared to 
speak. 
In this part of Mexico, at most seasons of the 
year, there are immense numbers of parrots. 
And in that country, wherever there are parrots, 
there the ocelots will be found. They are among 
the few arboreal cats in the world, catching their 
prey among the treetops as readily as on the 
ground. Their length is about two feet. They 
are seldom smaller when full grown, and only 
in extreme cases very much larger. 
They are not nearly so heavy as the average 
lynx of the eastern woods, and are infinitely 
lighter on their feet. They run with the great¬ 
est agility up and down the almost perpendicular 
trunks of trees, and follow a crippled bird out on 
limbs too slender, it would seem, to bear the 
weight of the parrot, let alone the cat. Parrots 
are the ocelot’s principal food, and their hunt¬ 
ing is done almost altogether by day, though, 
like all the cat tribe, they are thoroughly at 
home in the blackest night. 
The parrots which they hunt frequent the 
thickest of the forests, coming to the ground 
only in the rare open spaces and along the 
banks of the many small streams where they 
drink. In order to follow them, it is necessary 
that the ocelots be great jumpers, and so they 
are. When I was following the hounds through 
the Southern California hills after wildcats and 
an occasional mountain lion, I was wont to say 
that the latter was the greatest jumper on earth. 
The ocelot has any mountain lion that ever 
walked beaten a block, length for length and 
weight for weight. 
I never saw a jaguar jump, and the stories 
of the native Mexicans concerning this huge 
cat are so greatly exaggerated that it is im¬ 
possible to believe them, so I have no way of 
judging of the new world tiger’s abilities as a 
leaper. But I have seen the ocelot jump, clear¬ 
ing spaces from slender limb to slender limb 
that would stagger a well-grown monkey by their 
width. Compared with this little spotted fellow 
from the Rio Balsas, the California lion is an 
amateur, not out of the chart class. 
So far as I was able to observe, the ocelots— 
and there were a pair of them that lived in a 
little cave just back of our camp which I would 
not permit any one to shoot—did most of their 
hunting in that dull gray part of the day when 
light merges into darkness, and again when 
the darkness changes to daylight. I presume 
that they do hunt at night also, but I moved 
around mighty little through that black tangle 
after dark. 
On the ground these cats are livelier than 
any lynx I have ever seen, and their stalking of 
one or two small rodents, presumably rats of 
some species, was the most artistic bit of work 
I have ever seen a wild animal do. Their climb- 
inb among the treetops does not seem to hinder 
their movements on the ground, nor their pur¬ 
suit of parrots and other birds to lessen their 
ability at rat and rabbit catching. I was told 
by our Mexican “boy” that, when game of 
larger size runs short, the ocelots will get after 
the lizards, and even the snakes, which are so 
plentiful throughout the lowlands of this warm 
region. To do this, of course, they must de¬ 
scend from the plateaus, where, for the most 
part, they make their dens. 
A typical den which had apparently been oc¬ 
cupied for some years, judging by the number of 
bones surrounding it, was located just back of 
our camp. Rising slowly from the river a well 
wooded oak flat led up to this equal-crested 
knoll in which was imbedded a huge rock con¬ 
glomerate, evidently welded together when the 
earth was a few aeons younger. In this rock 
were many small potholes, but only one of 
any depth. This ran in some ten feet and then, 
as far as could be seen from the outside, opened 
into a considerable chamber, where the den was 
located. This is shown in the photograph as 
about half hidden by the leaves of the shrub 
that grew up from the bottom of the huge rock. 
Our few visits to the mouth of the cave, taken 
at a time when we thought the cats were away, 
did not seem to disturb them, at least they did 
not leave the flat while we were encamped along 
the river, and we knew for certain that the cave 
was their home. 
They hunted much over the flat below, on 
which, in years gone, woodchoppers had oper¬ 
ated, leaving, in the center of the oak growth, 
quite a stump lot. In this, the rats and some 
small species of animal quite like a rabbit were 
very plentiful, and there the ocelots hunted much 
at evening. The two always hunted together; 
in fact, I have since had Mexican hunters tell 
me that these cats commonly follow their game 
in this manner. If their way of catching rats 
was any criterion, the scheme certainly is a suc¬ 
cess in every way. 
There are many fallen stumps in this woodlot, 
and the rats would run through the holes made 
in these, seemingly trying to escape through this 
wooden tunnel from the sharp-clawed paws 
reaching in after them. But when the pair came 
out together, one would go to one end of the 
log, and the other to the opposite end. Which¬ 
ever way the rat ran a paw fell on him and his 
life went out with a squeak. I judge that they 
caught a thousand rats in the short time—less 
than a month—that we were encamped there, 
and yet the rats did not seem to know enough 
to avoid the flat. Doubtless these ocelots, may¬ 
hap their ancestors, had been catching rats there 
for some years. I sincerely hope they are still 
catching them there, for they are right fine 
hunters, and among the most beautiful animals 
I have ever seen. 
In view of the pictures which are reproduced 
herewith, it is useless for me to add any fur¬ 
ther description of the ocelots, but I may say 
that we had great sport hunting the cats on 
another occasion—on several occasions in fact, 
and in pursuit of quite another pair than those 
I have been describing. 
Starting out one afternoon at about 2 o’clock, 
taking only the boy, Pablo, with me, and a 
25.20 Winchester rifle, I struck up over the ridge 
toward the headwaters of an, unnamed but 
pretty little stream, which emptied into the Rio 
Balsas some mile or two below our camp. Al¬ 
most the entire distance was open country, 
covered with high trees, but with very little 
underbrush and gradually rising to a rocky 
ridge, covered with immense, deeply bedded 
boulders, such as the one in which the pair of 
ocelots had their den near our camp. 
After we had walked some two or three miles 
DEN OF THE OCELOTS IN CAVE BACK OF OAK FLAT. 
