CLICK TO READ ABOUT THE OCELOT
Please be patient while the video loads and becomes playable. It is worth the wait. It is charming to see the rare ocelot playing with a dog companion at a rescue center in Peru. The ocelot is relatively rare in the wild these days although the IUCN Red List declares the species to be “Least Concern”.
It was not always like that before the mass slaughter of them for the skin on their backs. This is a really beautiful cat and beauty makes wild animals vulnerable to exploitation by humans. The more beautiful and the more rare the more vulnerable the animal becomes to human exploitation which almost invariably leads to premature death for the beautiful creature.
https://www.facebook.com/Storyful/videos/624999031241034/
It is all about the humans’ desire to possess beautful things and it does not matter if the thing is perishable or not. I don’t want to lecture or become horribly boring but:
“US customs figures from the 1960s show that ocelot dominated the U.S. fur market, reaching a high of about 140,000 skins in 1970. It takes an average of 12.9 ocelot skins to make a fur coat.”
In 2002 the ocelot population in North America was reduced to 80-120 animals in southern Texas according to Mel and Fiona Sunquist. Today, 2019, it is believed that fewer than 60 remain.
