Meet the olinguito, Bassaricyon neblina, the newest and smallest documented member of the family Pro

Meet the olinguito, Bassaricyon neblina, the newest and smallest documented member of the family Procyonidae, which it shares with raccoons, coatis, kinkajous and olingos.

“Neblina,” the species name, comes from the spanish word for mist, due to the misty cloud forests the animal inhabits.

This one is a baby, and therefore offensively cute. The photo was taken within The Hummingbird Conservancy’s Messina-Paramillo Reserve in Colombia by Juan Rendon.

Olinguitos had been around for a while, but we didn’t realize they were a different species. I particularly enjoy this excerpt from the wikipedia page detailing our ignorance:

“Olinguitos were regularly seen and even publicly exhibited decades before they were recognized as members of a new species. The animal had previously been confused with its taxonomic cousins, the olingos. One such example was Ringerl, an olinguito who lived in the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., for a year and also toured many other zoos. Researchers unsuccessfully tried to breed her with olingos, not realizing she was a different species. Ringerl died in 1976.”

When it was announced that this was,indeed, a new species in 2013, scientists had no clue what the life of this creature in the wild was like: what it ate, how big it’s home range was, whether they were social, how many offspring it had and how often, etc.

But Uriel, the ex-hunter knew. He knew all about them and could spot them better than anyone.

@bioconservancy

#olinguito #bassaricyon #newspecies #procyon #conservation #colombia #biodiversity #neblina
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