Welcome, olinguito. Welcome to the mammalian family tree.

[gerisullivan]

The Smithsonian describes the olinguito's appearance as a cross between a house cat and a teddy bear.

These little guys are clever. They've been masquerading in zoos and elsewhere as the larger olingo, all the way down to having their DNA sequenced. My favorite story from the article is about a zoo olinguito:

"The wife of the animal's keeper told Helgen, 'We always thought there was something strange about that olingo," he said.

"She told Helgen this particular animal moved from zoo to zoo because she wouldn't breed with the olingos around her.

"'It wasn't because she was fussy, it was because she was not at all even the same species,' Helgen said."

Comments

[redbird]

I am delighted by the fact that the olinguito is already in GenBank (because of that misidentified zoo specimen).

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I imagine that the olinguito became very tired of telling each new set of zookeepers about how she didn't date outside her species. Silly humans!