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 in this video, they moved in tandem— like two old friends walking home from a bar.
Intrigued, they contacted researchers in other parts of the Amazon who turned up three additional, nearly identical videos from different locations and years.
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Opossums’ attraction to ocelots remains a mystery, but Dr. 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, an evolutionary biologist and ecologist at ETH Zurich and an author of the study.
Opossums are also resistant to the venom of pit vipers, a snake that lives in the Amazon. Ocelots lack that defense, and teaming up could give both animals an edge when hunting, Dr. Camerlenghi said. In North America, a similar alliance exists between coyotes and badgers, who buddy up to hunt squirrels.
