Native to the
cloud forests of Ecuador and Colombia, the olinguito is the newest
member of the raccoon family
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 samplesmostly 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 1960sits keepers were mystified as
to why it refused to breed with its peers.
Now, the discovery of the olinguito has solved the mystery.
At an announcement today in Washington, D.C., Kristofer Helgen,
curator of mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural
History, presented anatomical and DNA evidence that establish the
olinguito (pronounced oh-lin-GHEE-toe) as a living species distinct
from other known olingos, carnivorous tree-dwelling mammals native
to Central and South America. His team's work, also published today
in the journal ZooKeys, represents the first discovery of a new
carnivorous mammal species in the American continents in more than
three decades.
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. "To find a new carnivore species is a huge event," said
Ricardo Sampaio, a biologist at the National Institute of Amazonian
Research in Brazil, who studies South American mammals in the wild
and was not involved in the project.
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 situationboth a new carnivore,
and one that's widespread enough to have multiple kinds."
Though
Helgen has uncovered dozens of unknown mammal species during previous
expeditions, in this case, he did not set out to find a new species.
Rather, he sought to fully describe the known olingos. But when
he began his study in 2003, examining preserved museum specimens,
he realized how little scientists knew about olingo diversity. "At
the Chicago Field Museum, I pulled out a drawer, and there were
these stunning, reddish-brown long-furred skins," he said. "They
stopped me in my tracksthey weren't like any olingo that had
been seen or described anywhere." The known species of olingo have
short, gray fur. Analyzing the teeth and general anatomy of the
associated skulls further hinted that the samples might represent
a new species. Helgen continued his project with a new goal: Meticulously
cataloguing and examining the world's olingo specimens to determine
whether samples from a different species might be hidden among them.
Visits to 18 different museum collections and the examination
of roughly 95 percent of the world's olingo specimens turned up
dozens of samples that could have come from the mystery species.
Records indicated that these specimensmostly collected in
the early 20th centuryhad been found at elevations of 5,000
to 9,000 feet above sea level in the Northern Andes, much higher
than other olingos are known to inhabit.
To
visit these biologically rich, moist, high-elevation forests, often
called cloud forests, Helgen teamed with biologist Roland Kays of
the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and C. Miguel Pinto,
a mammalogist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York
City and a native of Quito, Ecuador. They traveled to Ecuadors'
Otonga Reserve, on the western slope of the Andes in 2006. "Mammalogists
had worked there before and done surveys, but it seemed they'd missed
this particular species," Kays said. "The very first night there,
we discovered why this might've been: When you go out and shine
your light up into the trees, you basically just see clouds."
After hours of careful watch, the researchers did spot some
creatures resembling the mystery specimens. But they also looked
a bit like kinkajous, other small carnivorous mammals in the raccoon
family. Ultimately, the researchers worked with a local hunter to
shoot and retrieve one of the animals, a last-resort move among
field biologists. Its resemblance to the mysterious museum specimens
was unmistakable. "I was filled with disbelief," Helgen said. "This
journey, which started with some skins and skulls in an American
museum, had taken me to a point where I was standing in a cloudy,
wet rainforest and seeing a very real animal."
The team spent parts of the next few years visiting the Otonga
Reserve and other cloud forests in Ecuador and Colombia, studying
the characteristics and behavior of the creatures that the researchers
began to call olinguitos (adding the Spanish suffix "-ito" to olingo,
because of the smaller size). Like other olingo species, the olinguitos
were mostly active at night, but they were slightly smaller: on
average, 14 inches long and two pounds in weight, compared to 16
inches and 2.4 pounds. Though they occasionally ate insects, they
largely fed on tree fruit. Adept at jumping and climbing, the animals
seldom descended from the trees, and they gave birth to one baby
at a time.
With blood samples taken from the olinguitos and several other
olingos, the researchers also performed DNA analysis, finding that
the animals are far more genetically distinct than first imagined.
Though other olingos lived as little as three miles away, olinguitos
shared only about 90 percent of their DNA with these olingos (humans
share about 99 percent of our DNA with both chimps and bonobos).
The
DNA analysis also exposed the olinguito that had been hiding in
plain sight. When the researchers tried to compare the fresh olinguito
DNA with the only olingo DNA sample in GenBank, the National Institute
of Health's library of genetic sequences, they found that the two
samples were virtually identical. Digging into the documentation
of the donor animal, which had been captured by a Colombian dealer,
the researchers found out that its keepers couldn't figure out why
it looked different and refused to breed with other olingos. The
animal was not an olingo, but an olinguito.
Many experts believe still more unknown species may be hiding
in scientific collectionsperhaps even in the Field Museum
collection that set Helgen's quest in motion, specimens from Colombia
mostly gathered by mammalogist Philip Hershkovitz during the 1950s.
"The scientific secrets of the collections he made more than 50
years ago are still not exhausted after all this time," said Bruce
Patterson, curator of mammals at the Field Museum, noting that two
new subspecies of woolly monkey were identified earlier this year
based on the collection.
Helgen,
Kays and the other researchers will continue studying the behavior
of the olinguitos and attempt to assess their conservation status.
An analysis of suitable habitats suggests that an estimated 42 percent
of the animal's potential range has already been deforested. Though
the species isn't imminently at risk, "there is reason to be concerned,"
Helgen said. "A lot of the cloud forests have already been cleared
for agriculture, whether for food or illicit drug crops, as well
as expanding just human populations and urbanization." If current
rates continue, the animalalong with many other species endemic
to these environmentscould become endangered.
The researchers, though, want the olinguito to help reverse
this process. "We hope that by getting people excited about a new
and charismatic animal, we can call attention to these cloud forest
habitats," Helgen said. Solving other mysteries of the natural world
requires leaving these habitats intact. "The discovery of the olinguito
shows us that the world is not yet completely explored, its most
basic secrets not yet revealed."
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