The species occupies a wide spectrum of habitats types, ranging from scrublands to tropical rain forests. What all these habitats have in common is a well-structured vegetation cover (Emmons 1988, Emmons et al. 1989, Sunquist and Sunquist 2002). Ocelots were recorded in mangrove forests, coastal marshes, savanna grasslands, thorn scrubs, and tropical and subtropical forest (primary, secondary, evergreen, seasonal and montane). The species typically occurs at elevations below 3,000 m but there are occasional reports of the species up to 3,000 m (Nowell and Jackson 1996, Sunquist and Sunquist 2002).

The Ocelot is a medium sized felid (11 kg), with a litter size of 1.4 kittens (1–4), and typically nocturno-crepuscular activity, but that could also be active during daytime (Oliveira and Cassaro 2005, Di Bitetti et al. 2006). Throughout much of its range tends to be the most abundant cat species. The Ocelot also reaches higher density estimates than its sympatric smaller species and was suggested that also negatively impact its small guild members (Di Bitetti et al. 2010, Oliveira et al. 2010). The species use similar habitat and show similar abundance patterns than Jaguars and Pumas and appear not to be affected by these species (Di Bitetti et al 2010, Davis et al. 2011)  Its diet includes small mammals, birds and reptiles, but include also larger sized prey (>800 g), such as agoutis, armadillos, pacas, monkeys, etc. that in some areas can constitute the most important items (Crawshaw 1995, Sunquist and Sunquist 2002, Moreno et al. 2006, Bianchi et al. 2010)

The home ranges of males are larger than the ranges of the sympatric females, but high variation exist on the size between regions (Dillon and Kelly 2008).  The largest home ranges (43 km² for males and 16 km² for females) were observed in Subtropical forest of Brazil and Argentina (Crawshaw 1995) and the smallest (2 to 6 km² for males and 1 to 3 km² for females) were observed in Texas (US), Brazilian Pantanal, Peruvian Amazonia and Bolivian Chaco (Navarro 1985, Emmons 1988, Crawshaw and Quigley 1989, Laack 1991, Maffei and Noss 2008).

The Ocelot is widely distributed from United States and Mexico through Central and South America south to North Argentina, southern Brazil and Uruguay, found in every country except Chile.  In the United States was recorded in Arizona (Strangl and Young 2011, Avilas-Villegas and Lamberton-Moreno 2012) and in two isolated subpopulations in the southern tip of Texas (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2010). At Uruguay was recorded at the Rivera Department, near the Brazilian border (Andrade-Nuñez and Aide 2010).

Included on CITES Appendix I. The species is protected across most of its range, with hunting banned in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, French Guiana, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, United States, Uruguay and Venezuela, and hunting regulations in place in Peru (Nowell and Jackson 1996). Part of the species range includes protected areas, including some capable of maintaining long-term viable populations.