New mammal species are trickier to find, but recent research published in ZooKeystakes note of a newly discovered critter — the olinguito.
Formally called Bassaricyon neblina, the olinguito is a carnivorous relative to the raccoon that’s been eluding the scientific community for ages. These tree-dwelling guys live in Ecuador and Columbia and tend to be most active at night when fog is especially dense, so they’ve been tricky to pin down and study, despite the fact that specimens existed in museum collections, but had been mislabelled. That’s because olinguitos look remarkably like another carnivorous species, the olingo, which definitely confused a couple of zoo-owners who it seems had access to a captive olinguito in the 1960s (apparently they just thought he was a weird looking olingo who refused to breed).
via Geekosystem
