The olinguito is the first new species of carnivore found in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years. Finding a new mammal especially a carnivore is rare.
The discovery corrects a long running case of mistaken identity. For decades scientists thought the mammal was an olingo a larger member of the raccoon family or another mammal. The animals had been observed in the wild tucked away in museum collections and even exhibited at zoos including the National Zoo.
No one realized it was a new species until further investigation and DNA testing.
In some ways this animal was hiding in plain sight said zoologist Roland Kays of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences who helped discover the olinguito. Its pelts and bones were found stashed away in dusty museum drawers either mislabeled or not labeled at all.
The animal puzzled zookeepers because it oddly refused to breed or mingle with other olingos.
They thought it was just a fussy olingo but turns out it was completely the wrong species said Smithsonian zoologist Kristofer M. Helgen who spearheaded the sleuthing on the olinguito which is Spanish for little olingo.
Getting a new scientific name out there is really fun he said. It s almost like giving birth.
Although olinguitos have been spotted in the cloud forests of the northern Andes in rain forests at elevations of 5 000 to 9 000 feet above sea level scientists speculate the animals also might live elsewhere in Central and South America.
Finding the species was sort of an accident. Helgen initially went museum digging because he was determined to find out how many species of the olingo existed. At the Field Museum of Chicago what he found in a drawer stopped him dead in his tracks.
The reddish orange pelts he saw were nothing like the skins of the olingos. Searching further he learned that the anatomy of the skull was different shorter snout dissimilar teeth.
I knew at that point it was a new species but I also knew I needed to be sure Helgen said. For years he toiled away to confirm that the olinguito was a new species with thorough investigation and DNA testing always afraid that another scientist would beat him to the punch.
Finally he called upon Kays the world s resident olingo expert to help him track down a wild olinguito in its natural habitat. The researchers along with Ecuadorian zoologist Miguel Pinto set off on a weeks long field expedition to the Andean cloud forests.
Amid the misty treetops and giant tomato sized figs the team spotted one the first night.
It sort of bounced around the trees almost like a monkey Kays said doing its thing eating the figs.
Zoologist DeeAnn M. Reeder of Bucknell University co curator of a scientific database of mammals finds the olinguito to be an extraordinarily beautiful animal and says that to describe a new carnivore in the 21st century is special and amazing.
This gets people excited about science and museum work and about the things you can discover she said.
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