No, ocelots can’t be black based on current knowledge. I have looked high and low for pictures and information about melanistic or black ocelots and I have found nothing. I have the best book on wild cats and the description of this cat does not include any information about melanistic ocelots. Melanism is a genetic mutation turning coats dark, charcoal black.
The reason why this cat was hunted so prolifically is because it has such a wonderful coat, “the most wonderful tangle of stripes, bars, chains, spots, dots and smudges… which look as though they were put on as the animal ran by.” [Description by Ernest T Seaton in 1929]
There is nothing more to say except that if anybody else who reads this has heard of melanistic or black ocelots, please leave a comment and if possible a photograph and I will put the information into the main body of the article with a credit.
Thanks Mike. A great sighting recorded on this page with an excellent record of the location.
I just heard of the ocelot sighting near Nogales. Around 1983 I saw a solid shiny black cat 20 feet in front of my truck. It stopped in the road for about 7 seconds. It had green eyeshine and looked like a female. She was about 32 inches from chest to butt and 17 inches to the top of her back. All these years I assumed she was a young Jaguar. Now I’m convinced she was an ocelot. She looked exactly like the ocelot pictures. This was on Harshaw Road about 3 miles South of Patagonia.
Thanks Kerry for sharing. Shame that the cat was chained up as that is inhumane treatment of an animal especially a wild animal. But thanks anyway.