Videos From the Amazon Reveal an Unexpected Animal Friendship

Screenwriters in search of the next Timon and Pumbaa may want to look to the Amazon, where unlikely ocelot-opossum duos have been filmed hanging out together.
Researchers at Cocha Cashu Biological Station in southeastern Peru set up a camera trap to study bird behavior, but they got a surprise guest appearance instead: an ocelot trailing an opossum through the jungle at night. The ocelot, a wild cat slightly larger than a house cat, and the common opossum, a marsupial, are usually predator and prey. But this time, they moved in tandem.
“We were skeptical about what we had seen,” said Isabel Damas-Moreira, behavioral ecologist in Germany. Perhaps the ocelot was shadowing its dinner-to-be to learn about its behavior, they wondered, although that didn’t explain the opossum’s laid-back behavior. Then came a second clip of the same odd couple on the trail minutes later. “Like two old friends walking home from a bar,” Damas-Moreira said.
Intrigued, they contacted researchers in other parts of the Amazon who turned up three similar videos from different sites and years. Damas-Moreira’s team then set up an experiment, which they described in the journal Ecosphere. They left strips of fabric infused with ocelot scent, puma scent and a control in front of camera traps.
Opossums visited the ocelot scent 12 times, often lingering to rub against, sniff or bite the fabric. The puma scent attracted just one brief visit. Opossums’ attraction to ocelots remains a mystery, but Damas-Moreira and her colleagues suspect there’s something that draws both animals. One hypothesis is “chemical camouflage.”
“Opossums have a strong smell, and a close-by ocelot might help hide the opossum’s scent from bigger predators, or the opossum’s odor might mask the ocelot’s presence from prey,” said Ettore Camerlenghi, with ETH Zurich and an author of the study. Opossums are also resistant to the venom of pit vipers, while ocelots lack that defense. Teaming up could give both animals an edge when hunting. — CLARISSA BRINCAT / NYT