Man plays with wild ocelot in Costa Rica

May 20, 2016 • 2:30 pm

It’s Friday afternoon, and that means CAT TIME! This video was put up only 3 days ago, and already has nearly 1.8 million views. Such is the power of cats on the internet.

I’m not sure who Coyote Peterson is, and I’m dubious of a guy who takes the nickname of a d*g. I’m also worried that a “tame” wild ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) has the potential to be poached. But what a gorgeous creature this half-grown cat is! As reader Su mentioned when sending it to me, it’s a great pity this hasn’t happened to me during my travels.

29 thoughts on “Man plays with wild ocelot in Costa Rica”

  1. That’s gotta be someone’s pet. I have cats who have lived with me for 10 years who aren’t that well suited to play and being picked up.

    1. I think it was a pet that got released into the wild. I lived on the Osa peninsula and it has numerous lodges where an ocelot kitten might have been kept as a pet or rescued after the death of the mother (local people will kill them for eating their chickens).

      One thing he said may hint at its domestic past:

      4:32 “This is a wild ocelot, 100% wild right now…”
      which may imply it wasn’t wild at some earlier time.

  4. What a beautiful creature.

    Looked a bit painful though. Reminds me of my current Empress who doesn’t really know, or perhaps care about, the subtle differences between play and blood sport.

  7. You’re probably right, Jerry. That cat is not going to remain free for long. Someone will poach it to be skinned or become an exotic pet to some sheik somewhere. Teaching wild animals to be unafraid of humans only leads to problems. This dude-bro “naturalist” and his “crew” out filming the “behaviorisms” of this half-tame ocelot weren’t doing it any favors.

    1. I was thinking the same thing, if he really cared about her well being he would drive her off. She is probably going to have a short life, and he is going to be partly responsible for that outcome.

      And he should know that.

    2. My thought exactly, however enticing and thrilling that play was. That kitten will not be able to discern who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy.

      1. Good guys wear black hats and bad guys don’t?
        That is a worrying issue, but from what they said at the start – that they’d been warned about this ocelot on this trail – the human habituation has been going on for a time. Also, by implication, there are local “guides” who profit from this ocelot’s behaviour, so are going to be motivated to protect those profits. It’s the old argument about nature preserves versus allowing the locals (I hate the term “natives”) to profit from the wildlife, and so be motivated to preserve it themselves.

  10. Sorry, but this guy is a knob. He has stolen Steve Irwin’s schtick (sic) and not very well. Lovely cat, though.

  11. Many years ago, when I lived in the Houston area, I visited the Houston Zoo. Two things I still remember about that visit stick with me all these years. The first was that at the ocelot enclosure there were two ocelot kittens who would come right up to the wire of the cage. I was so tempted to reach my fingers through the cage to pet them, but I resisted the impulse. The second was that there was a class of kids visiting the zoo and they all had red balloons to help the teachers keep track of the kids. As they went by the lion enclosure all the lions were sitting on a hill and just staring at the balloons, following them with their gaze the whole time.

    1. lions were sitting on a hill and just staring at the balloons, following them with their gaze the whole time.

      That’s a pride who associate red balloons with lunch.

  12. This cat isn’t displaying normal behavior. Normally they are extremely hard to even get a glimpse of. It’s also not the apex predator that this guy suggests. Animals the size of a turkey are about the maximum I would expect them to take. Sadly they are often killed in rural areas here in Costa Rica because they are notorious chicken hunters that will keep coming back till either there are no chickens left or someone shoots them. Still, I’m quite envious of this guys experience.

  13. My dad liked to say that, back in the late 1950s, he and my mom were trying to choose between having a baby and getting an ocelot. They are quite docile for a wild cat, and back in the day, they were much sought-after pets.

  14. I forgot to finish the anecdote – they decided to have my brother instead of the ocelot O_O

  15. Um, well he did say that it was a kitten and on a trail frequented by people. Probably it has been fed and lost all fear of people. Not really a good idea but totally possible.

    I visited key west once and they had an animal show where they were feeding… I don’t even remember what. But the thing I remember is that a wild Heron landed two feet away and demanded its share. She said it was illegal for her to feed it but it usually got a trivial feed anyway.

  18. By the way, one of my six my cats, Charlotte, a black, long-haired, lithe, feather of a puss, will sniff, lick and then nip me, even grab onto my skin and hold it, unprovoked. Like a kitten with her mother’s nipple. This is since her sainted mother, Penny, died of cancer.

    If I should pet the sides of her mouth in any way, or under her chin, but especially along the sides of her lips, she is likely to gently try to “ang-ang” bite me. This female was completely ignored by her self-sacrificing mother, Penny, in favor of her brother, Keaton, who remains, to this day, a complete mamma’s boy (now…I am “Mama.” ). I try to give him the attention he clearly expects (such confidence!), but I try to favor poor, neglected Charlotte, who is often abused by her bully-brother and another spunky male as well, Poor Dear. I do dote on her.

    Wish I could show you photos of my brood, but especially of Charlotte. Her markings are so regular, like a naive painting of a cat! A genetic wonder! It is as if her genes paired themselves off to create a clearly-marked, uniform badge of a cat! I call her twinkle-toes, because her two middle toes on each front paw, perfectly matched, are white toes. Her chin is a square of white, with no “milk dribble” so common among cats with white chin markings. Her whisker-baskets have white vibrissae, but her eyebrows have black whiskers. She has white markings beginning on her chest, distinctive that they start there, and undulate to her rear legs where the white feathers spread to true pantaloons or petticoats, visible outside her legs and belly when she sits. She has knee-length rolled-up, white stockings starting at her tarsal joints on her hind legs.

    Given her “invisible” eyebrow whiskers, she can appear haughty. I know she is not so.

    I have rescued (and nurtured and housed most of them) over 70 cats in my lifetime. I am a blessed hominid.

  19. Prepare to groan – How do you titalate an ocalot?
    Oscillate her tit a lot.
    (sorry, but I have been waiting years to say that).

Comments are closed.