Ocelots revisited

I have been working in Costa Rica for over a decade now. It's really one of the most special places on earth for me and it is also home to many of my favorite animals: jaguars, tapirs, tayras, the list goes on! Many of these animals are quite rare. In all the years that I've been camera trapping, we only recently detected our first jaguar in La Selva in 2018 with my students Adrian Figueroa and Matthew Willson. However, one animal that has always held my attention and a special place in my heart is one of the lesser known felids: the ocelot. Ocelots are arguably the most striking of all the cats with their beautiful spots and anastomosing stripes. I've published some results from my work examining how visual and scent lures influence ocelot detection, but I've never fully ingested all the ocelot data potential that we have collected over the years. I have a new student, Dani Mayes, from Meredith College here in Raleigh that is up for the task of trying to use the unique spot patterns to identify all the individual ocelots and see if we have enough photographic captures and recaptures to robustly estimate their densities in the San Juan - La Selva Biological Corridor. Stay tuned for more on this as we explore these data and in the meantime - enjoy this video of an ocelot mama and her cub from La Selva, 2018!