Reeves and Swanson have been working on their ocelot project since 2021. The team has tried - unsuccessfully so far - to breed ocelots two ways.
The first is via artificial insemination, in which semen collected from a cat is deposited directly into a female cat's reproductive tract.
The second is in vitro fertilization, in which oocytes, or eggs, are collected from the female cat's body and fertilized with semen in a petri dish before developing into an embryo in an incubator. The viable embryo is then surgically transferred into a cat or frozen to be transferred later.