What animal did Dalí famously walk on a leash in Paris?

The animal Salvador Dalí famously walked on a leash in Paris was an anteater.

The image is most closely associated with a 1969 photograph of Dalí emerging from a Paris Métro station while leading a giant anteater. The bizarre scene fit his carefully cultivated image as a Surrealist artist who transformed ordinary public appearances into spectacles.

Accounts of Dalí’s relationship with the animal vary. Some describe it as his pet and say he taught an anteater to walk on a leash in Paris as early as the 1950s. Other accounts treat the 1969 appearance as a staged publicity event involving an animal borrowed for the occasion. Either way, the anteater—not an ocelot, llama, or kangaroo—is the animal remembered in the famous Paris images.

The confusion with an ocelot is understandable because Dalí also regularly appeared with Babou, his pet ocelot. Babou was a spotted wild cat and a recurring companion, whereas the anteater became iconic through a single, highly theatrical public appearance.