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| This undated photo provided by the Smithsonian Institution shows an olinguito. The Smithsonian announced Thursday, Aug. 15, 2013 that they have discovered that the mammal, which they had previously mistaken for an olingo, is actually a distinct species. The olinguito belongs to the grouping of large creatures that include dogs, cats and bears. The raccoon-sized critters leap through the trees of the cloud forests of Ecuador and Colombia at night, according to a Smithsonian researcher who has spent the past decade tracking them. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Imagine a mini-raccoon with a teddy bear face that is so cute
it's hard to resist, let alone overlook. But somehow science did - until
now.
Researchers announced Thursday a rare
discovery of a new species of mammal called the olinguito. The
reddish-brown animal is about 14-inches long with an equally long tail
and weighs about 2 pounds.
It belongs to a grouping of large creatures that include dogs, cats and bears.
The
critter leaps through the trees of mountainous forests of Ecuador and
Colombia at night, according to a Smithsonian researcher who has spent
the past decade tracking them.
But the
adorable olinguito (oh-lihn-GEE'-toe) shouldn't have been so hard to
find. One of them once lived in the Smithsonian-run National Zoo in
Washington for a year in a case of mistaken identity.
"It's
been kind of hiding in plain sight for a long time" despite its
extraordinary beauty, said Kristofer Helgen, the Smithsonian's curator
of mammals.
The little zoo critter, named
Ringerl, was mistaken for a sister species, the olingo. Before she died
in 1976, Ringerl was shipped from zoo to zoo in Louisville, Ky., Tucson,
Ariz., Salt Lake City, Washington and New York City to try to get it to
breed with other olingos.
She wouldn't.
"It turns out she wasn't fussy," Helgen said. "She wasn't the right species."
The discovery is described in a study in the journal ZooKey.
Helgen
first figured olinguitos were different from olingos when he was
looking at pelts and skeletons in a museum. He later led a team to South
America in 2006.
"When we went to the field
we found it in the very first night," said study co-author Roland Kays
of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. "It was almost like it
was waiting for us."
It's hard to figure how olingos and onlinguitos were confused for each other.
"How is it different? In almost every way that you can look at it," Helgen said.
Olinguitos are smaller, have shorter tails, a rounder face, tinier ears and darker bushier fur, he said.
"It looks kind of like a fuzzball ... kind of like a cross between a teddy bear and a house cat," Helgen said.
It
eats fruit and has one baby at a time. Helgen figures there are
thousands of olinguitos in the mountainous forest, traveling through the
trees at night which makes them hard to see.
While
new species are found regularly, usually they are tiny things like
insects and not mammals, the warm-blooded advanced class of animals that
have hair, live births and mammary glands in females.
Outside
experts said this discovery is not merely renaming something, but a
genuine new species - with three new subspecies. It's the type of
significant find that hasn't happened in the Americas for about 35
years.
"Most people believe there are no new
species to discover, particularly of relatively large charismatic
animals," said Case Western Reserve University anatomy professor Darin
Croft. "This study demonstrates that this is clearly not the case."
The olinguito is the smallest member of the raccoon family of mammals.
The
researchers only saw olinguitos in Ecuador and Colombia, but they said
they could also be living in parts of Panama, Costa Rica, Venezuela,
Brazil, Peru, and Guyana, based on their cloud forest habitat.
The olingo is also native to Central and South America.
The
North Carolina museum is already selling olinguito stuffed animals for
about $15. Proceeds will benefit habitat preservation for the creatures.
