The animal lives in the trees and can jump from one to another.

The researchers found out that the olinguito primarily eats fruits, but also insects and nectar, and its activity is mostly at night. This animal had been missed by everyone.”Įven people who live in the Andes had the same confusion about olinguitos being olingos, because humans don’t hunt them and the creatures stay in the trees, Helgen said.

Seeing the fluffy tree-dweller for the first time, Helgen felt “sheer elation, just incredible excitement but at the same time almost disbelief. On their very first night on the pursuit, the team found a real, living olinguito. Cloud forests are “cloaked in fog,” Helgen said. They teamed up in Ecuador in 2006, using Pinto’s knowledge of cloud forest habitats to pick the best spots to investigate. Helgen and colleagues worked with Miguel Pinto, a zoologist in Ecuador, who had shot a few seconds of video that appeared to depict the animal. Records indicated to Helgen that such specimens came from the northern Andes about 5,000 to 9,000 feet above sea level, which is much higher than olingo habitats. The teeth and skull were smaller and shaped differently than olingos, and the coat was denser. Helgen began his detective work in pursuit of the new species when he set out about a decade ago to comprehensive study of olingos.īehind the scenes at the Chicago Field Museum in 2003, he remembers pulling out a drawer of skins and skulls that didn’t look like any animal he had ever seen before, or that had been reported by zoologists. Olingos are larger, less furry and have longer faces than the newly discovered species. Previously, scientists had assumed that olinguitos were members of their sister species, the olingos, Helgen said. “It was in museums, it’s been in zoos, and its DNA had even been sequenced, but no one had connected the pieces and looked close enough to realize, basically, the significance of this remarkable and this beautiful animal,” Helgen said. This animal had been seen before by humans, Helgen said, but it had been “a case of mistaken identity.”

Twitter: argue that the olinguito should be considered the smallest living member of the raccoon family, which includes other animals that make us go “aCats, bears, and olinguitos belong to the Carnivora order.

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