Olinguito – Smallest Olingo Species Discovered this month
I follow the blog, but if for some reason this has already been posted then feel free to delete it.. but I ran across a few articles about the olinguito – the newest carnivore recognized in the Americas, and the first one in 35 years.
Apparently this species is less than 1kg and lives in Andean Cloud Forests, as you would expect. Here’s a link. Note that it’s very unscientific sounding, but here it is nonetheless:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/16/olinguito-newly-named-mammal-extinction
4 Comments
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tomeslice
Cool, so I take it you have seen the Olinguito! I wouldn’t go there JUST to see the Olinguito, but any Andean cloud forest reserve in Colombia/Ecuador/Peru is an interesting and diverse place.
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vdinets
Rio Nambi is one of my favorite places in the Andes. It is the wettest cloud forest in South America (it has rained there every day since at least the Conquista) and it has lots of great stuff. A spectacled bear cub tried to steal my backpack there. Also, it’s easily accessible and gets less than 30 visitors per year.
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vdinets
Actually, the animal has been known for years, but it has never been accurately described, and the situation was made even more obscure by numerous descriptions of aberrant lowland olingos as “new species”. Olinguito is not particularly rare; Rio Nambi (with soft N) Nature Reserve in Colombia is a good place to see it.