For all of modern history, a small, carnivorous South American mammal in the raccoon family has evaded the scientific community. Untold thousands of these red, furry creatures scampered through the trees of the Andean cloud forests, but they did so at night, hidden by dense fog. Nearly two dozen preserved samples—mostly skulls or furs— were mislabeled in museum collections across the United States. There’s even evidence that one individual lived in several American zoos during the 1960s—its keepers were mystified as to why it refused to breed with its peers.
Although new species of insects and amphibians are discovered fairly regularly, new mammals are rare, and new carnivorous mammals especially rare. The last new carnivorous mammal, a mongoose-like creature native to Madagascar, was uncovered in 2010. The most recent such find in the Western Hemisphere, the Colombian weasel, occurred in 1978.
Olinguitos, formally known as Bassaricyon neblina, inhabit the cloud forests of Ecuador and Colombia in the thousands, and the team’s analysis suggests that they are distributed widely enough to exist as four separate subspecies. “This is extremely unusual in carnivores,” Helgen said, in advance of the announcement. “I honestly think that this could be the last time in history that we will turn up this kind of situation—both a new carnivore, and one that’s widespread enough to have multiple kinds.”
Welcome to the Dope Medium. Glad to have you here. It is standard however, to provide a link tothe column in question when you comment.
And a fascinating link of your own. Thanks!
And the little olinguito wasn’t unknown (heck, the National Zoo had one in the seventies) so much as incorrectly classified (everyone just assumed it was some kind of dwarf olingo).
eastcheap is pointing out the distinction between the biological order of carnivorans that includes weasels, cats, dogs, bears, seals, etc, and the term carnivorous that applies to any animal that exclusively or primarily eats meat. Some carnivorans, such as the giant panda, are largely herbivorous.
The article states that while olinguitos occassionally eat insects, they largely feed on tree fruit. Calling them “carnivorous” seems misleading. It’s weird that the Smithsonian’s Kristofer Helgen would not make that distinction.
Someone (Cecil?) is off by at least an order of magnitude here. The Earth is only 25,000 miles in circumference, so a 40,000 mile continuous mountain range would have to spiral around the globe 1.6 times. Not likely.
A 4,000 mile range is within the realm of possibility.
Well, if you look at the map included* in the Wikipedia article, the continuous mid-oceanic ridge system really does zig and zag all over the bottoms of the Artic, Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans. Plus apparently has several multi-hundred-mile dead-end branchings.
Yeah… 40k kilometers is perfectly reasonable.
*I’ve referred back to the original image from the US Geologic Survey. I find it amusing that the USGS calls this image “baseball”… because the oceanic ridgelines do have an interesting resemblence to the stitching of the seam a baseball.
That may be, but I still think it’s underused. =) Mostly I was struck by the oddness of gnoitall’s “40k kilometer” construction, which would expand to “40 kilo-kilometers”.
Powers &8^]
