hi guys welcome to the Cincinnati Zoo of Botanical Gardens home safari my name is
Colleen and I'm here with Alicia and Mark the humans and we have Sihil the Ocelot
we're part of the cat Ambassador Program here at the Cincinnati Zoo so what
better to bring you guys from Home Safari today any one of our cats now
today I'm here to tell you a little bit about ocelots of Sihil and of course I
will try to leave some time to answer your questions so what we're gonna do is
we're going to talk about ocelots we're going to talk a little bit
about their natural history when they're adaptations then all sort of going
to Sihil the individual will tell you a little bit about her personality and
their story here at the Cincinnati Zoo and then of course the questions
the first thing that you'll notice when you see Sihil is that she looks like a
domestic cat but a lot of differences I'm sure if you have domestic cat calls
you're gonna be able to pick out those differences and similarities so while
you're watching this I want you to really look at those things you don't
have that or not we're gonna talk a little bit about adaptations first now
the Ocelot is a nocturnal predator she's a carnivore that is native to the
rainforests of Central America predominantly they have a pretty
wide range though and then they can live in brush out attack and even have a
range that goes up as far as South Texas here in the United States which is
pretty cool to think about having these guys native to of the United States
pretty exotic looking cat now I mentioned that they're nocturnal
so let's talk a little bit about those adaptations that she has that make her a
really great nocturnal predator we know nocturnal means that she's out
predominantly during the day and we know that adaptations are things that you
have on the body or you have the ability to do that help you to survive in your
environment so if you're surviving in a nighttime environment you're going to
need a few key adaptations as a predator you're gonna need really big eyes think
of all of the nighttime predators that you know you can remember things like
cats or owls they're usually those big eyes because
they're taking in as much light as possible to be able to take in all that
moonlight so that they can see what they're hunting another great nocturnal
adaptation that she has is those long whiskers whiskers are a great adaptation
that ocelots and a lot of other animals especially
cats have to be able to feel tiny movements in their environment and to be
able to figure out where they can squeeze their body into without having
to get stuck now lastly one thing I want you to notice and this is probably where
you're going to tell the difference between your pet at home your pet house
cat and Sihil is that she has a pretty awesome coat she has a darker colored
coat that's going to help her to blend in
to the night and she's also going to have a great pattern and that's good
camouflage a lot of different types of animals have camouflage depending on
where they live and what types of surroundings that they need to blend
into but your cat at home doesn't really need to blend in do they so they have
lots of different colors stripes patterns and variations
whereas ocelots always going to look like this with lots of spots to be able
to help them to blend in and a dark color that's really gonna help them
blend in at night now let's talk about her being an adaptive predator or
Carnivore so being a carnivore means that you eat meat and cats especially are
just meat eaters they're what we call obligate carnivores which is just sort
of a big word for they have to eat meat in order to survive she has a lot of
very cool adaptations that are gonna help her to be a good hunter a good
carnivore and a good predator she's showing off one of them right now and
that's her climbing abilities yes Sihil here is 19 years old they have a
lifespan that's pretty similar to that of an average house cat so being 19
years old and still climbing up that pole was really impressive
we'll see if she'll do it again in just a little bit but that's pretty hard for
her she's for a my age at this point but what that's gonna do is that ocelots
adaptation to help them to be a good hunter it is they can climb up trees
looking for things that they'd want to eat up in the tops of the canopies or
they can climb a controlled climb down like you are able to see her do just a
minute ago that helps them to look down at the rainforest floor she might as
well now the wild ocelots eat primarily rodents or small mammals but they're not
very picky eaters at all in fact they've been seen eating birds
they've been seen eating fish they have been seen eating pretty much anything they
can get their paws on in fact they do have the ability to catch prey that is
up to four times their size think of how strong this path must be to be able to
take down prey it's four times her size pretty strong know what you saw her
playing with earlier that orange ball that's just one of her toys because
she's not spending all of her time searching and searching and really
having to work for hunting we want to give her opportunities to play and to
sort of problem-solve and be able to figure out her environment in a way that
we call enrichment now because she's not really having to struggle out in the
wild doesn't mean that she doesn't need her mind to have a lot of time to play
and think and figure things out so that's why we give our animals
enrichment every day because nobody likes to be bored I'm sure you guys
don't and having toys and different things to see and do is just as much
important for our animals here at the Cincinnati Zoo as it is for you guys all
at home it's always fun to have something new to play with or something
fun to figure out now this is a really cool puzzle feeder that she has right
here it has one of her favorite foods at the zoo just frozen mouse remember she's
a carnivore so she could does have to eat meat and frozen prey is just about
her favorite thing but she's going to have to do something right now that
she's that was similar to what she would have to do in a while now there's not
little suet feeders of frozen mice in the wild of course but she would have to
figure out how to get a mouse out of a burrow maybe she would have to figure
out how to get prey out of a old decaying log she would have to use her
brain a lot we call that cognitive thinking but all that really means is
that she has to use her brain to solve a lot of problems she also has
to figure out how to use our body which is really fun for a person off of
a camera to try to move around and figure out exactly what Sihil's gonna do
next we talked a little bit about Sihil's
adaptations or ocelots in general but I wanted a view of seconds to talk about
Sihil as an individual because she is really fun she's so fun to work with
she's part of our Cat Ambassador Program and what that means is that she spends
her entire life doing programming and educational venues to be able to teach
people without ocelots and about a lot conservation
she has a pretty unique backstory she was actually a frozen embryo implanted
into a surrogate ocelot mom which was really important work that our CREW scientists
do and she was the first wild or exotic cat the first exotic cat to have a
successful frozen embryo which is actually how she gets her name
Sihil means to be born again yeah yeah you got that my mouse great job so to be
born again is Mayan means that's what Sihil means and it's because she was
the first little stage of life and then she was frozen and then became life
again in her surrogate mother who lived here at the zoo as well all right well
I'm going to see if we have any questions which we have a ton and I'm so glad you
guys do because Sihil's awesome and we love answering questions about
her so the first question I got is how big will she get well she is 19 years
old she is as big as she'll ever get now now that's not to say that all ocelots
are this size there is a subspecies of ocelot called the Brazilian Ocelot and
males of that subspecies can get about two times this big Sihil's
subspecies is generic so this is about their size but they can get up to about
30 pounds I also got that I also got the fun another question that says how are
they related to cheetahs well to be completely honest they share the same
family which is the cat family or Felidae because their felines or felids
but after that that's really where a lot of those similarities in genetics and as
you can see similarities and adaptations are gonna split off so they're in the
cat family but not very much more related to
cheetahs than that how fast can they run now that's a really good question
especially for us because we also work with cheetahs is in our department and
I'll tell you that ocelots are really quick but they're not
nearly as fast as cheetahs we know that cheetahs can run up to 70 miles per hour
and they don't know exactly how fast ocelots can run but I'd say it's around
25 to 30 miles per hour at their fastest and that's still a lot slower than cheetahs
now Sihil has lived at the zoo her entire life remember she was born at the
zoo she was sort of created in our CREW lab so that was one question how long
has she lived at the zoo she's lived at the zoo in her entire life in fact all
of our ambassadors were either born at our zoo or born at another zoo and then
raised here by us and will live there their entire life and that's something
that's really important for the Cincinnati Zoo and the Cincinnati Zoo's Cat Ambassador
department is that we're making sure that these animals have full quality care for
their entire life all right I also have another good question
what is their closest relative but they're closely related to animals like
margays it's just been I thought it's uh almost twins very cool
we're all ready have any more questions thank you guys so much for tuning in
it's so fun to be able to have you guys tuned in remotely and be able to share
our animals with us we're here working every day at this
to make sure animals are giving quality here you been through all of these weeks
so being able to do not only take care for animals but do what we love and share
these animals with you guys is so important and so fun and I really
appreciate our entire zoo community appreciates you guys tuning in and still
supporting what we do in supporting our animals as well it looks like we're
getting a few more questions coming in
now that's a really good question how much food today now this is going to
vary and it's gonna be a little bit different from ocelots that are gonna be
hunting versus ocelots that are here in our care and management if this isn't a
zoo at the Cincinnati Zoo probably maybe 3/4 of a pound of food a day now this is
gonna be made up of raw meats prey fish mice and sometimes other novel meat that
is going to be really nutritious and delicious for her but if they were to be
hunting again they could probably have these big meals if they were able to
catch something really big and then sort of not hunt for a while that's just
really dependent on how much they are hunting and what types of things they're
hunting no your see her playing with some of her toys right now and also
rubbing on that's something that cats do you sure you seen your cats at home do
it but animals at the zoo do as well when they smell something
that you like they'd love to rub on it like she got called out doing anything
so we got a question what's the best time of day to see her well if she were
animal out in her native range you'd have really probably never seen them
they're out at night they like being in closed cover but if you're at the zoo
seeing Sihil is gonna be something where you can only see her during
programming time but there are other ocelots that live at the zoo and they
live in our night hunters building they have special lighting in there that
creates a dark a dark ambience in that the animals that are nocturnal like Sihil
remember that means out at night they can feel comfortable to be out and
exploring their habitat oh I got the question who's her favorite
zookeeper I'm gonna have to say that it's Alicia I love working with Sihil to and
I might be a close second but Alicia has worked with her for 14 years 15 years
and so being an 18 year old cat 19 year old cat who's having a really good time
sent marking on her toy really rubbing on it all the good stinks I think that
Alicia is gonna have to win that one that's Alicia and then how many
spots are on their coat on average that's a fantastic question that I don't have the answer to
now count the spots no just kidding their spots are really interesting her
pattern is really a lot of different types of spots to see she has nice close
ones she has ones they're a little more with dots in the middle we call those
rosettes there's a really beautiful spot patterns
very similar to of Jaguars coat and then she also has some spots that have molded
into stripes on her tail and on her neck and face so to be able to count all that
and all the different ones will be pretty hard two spots that I want to
point out though are the white ones on the backs of her ears
that's strategic those white spots are going to be false eyes and there are
also really great indicators to her ear placement ear placement is a really great
way to know how an animal is feeling if you guys have pets at home or cats at
home specifically I'm sure you've noticed that if the ears are pressed
back that's a good indicator that they're not happy about something if
their ears are holy for their alert and really investigating their environment
and if they're sort of relaxed then that means that they are well relaxed so
having those white spots on the back of the ear helped other animals to not
only feel like they know the communication that the animal is doing
but also is going to act as a instead of fake eyes so that other animals might be
confused about what position this animal is looking and that's really great for
camouflage and for hunting as well we had another good question it's two
parts to framing first they want to know how hard it is to train a large cat
species and they also have an eight-year-old at home that wants to
become a really good house cat trainer and what about you any tips for them
absolutely so I'd say the treaty a big cat or an exotic cat is a little bit
difficult just because of the types of animals they are it takes a lot of time
and it takes a big commitment knowing these animals and knowing their
individual personalities as well as their species personalities you can see
Sihil right now rubbing on a perch where birds have sat so that's really funny
smell about it and you can see she's really rubbing on that um so other than
that though to be able to train cats is really just the same basic principles of
animal training in general if you guys at home have worked on training with
your dog we really use the exact same types of techniques as far as positive
reinforcement operant learning and doing a lot of relationship building and
desensitization as well now for anybody at home that's really wanting to work
with training their house cats and their dogs this is a great time to do it if
you're at home a little bit more than usual because one of the biggest things
to be able to have when you're training an animal is time and patience
consistency is the other biggest part and what I recommend that you do first
and foremost before you start training with your animal at home is to find out
what is something really really positive they can act as a reward reinforcement
reinforcement or basically like a payment for the types of behaviors
you're asking for now whether that be a treat a toy some dogs like getting
scratches as reinforcements or rewards Sihil not so much she prefers the food
as you guys saw earlier now those are really great questions and I absolutely
love it all right well again I want to thank you
guys so much for tuning in to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens Home Safari
we have loved sharing our ocelot with Sihil has had me blast being out here
smelling everything seeing everything you know this might be fun for you guys
at home but it's super fun for our animals to get out see new things and
enjoy their new spaces as well this is fun enrichment for them so we thank you
guys for tuning in and having an interest in tuning in because not only
is it great for you guys at home it helps us share our passions and it
allows for our animals to have fun and normal opportunities as well now I do
want to say if you're loving this we are hoping to have three o'clock tomorrow is
going to be mo the sloth so sloths lovers out there mark your calendars set
an alarm three o'clock log in and we'll have more animals for you on our Home
Safari program thanks guys bye