Scientists at the Smithsonian said Thursday that they discovered a new mammal and it looks adorable. The olinguito is being described as a mix between a teddy bear and a cat, but it comes from the same family as raccoons, coatis, kinkajous and olingos.
According to NBC4 Washington, this is the first carnivore discovered in the western hemisphere in 35 years, but scientists said that its diet is now mostly made up of fruits. The olinguito lives in forests near the Andes mountain range in South America. They have big eyes, orange-brown fur and have babies one at a time.
Kristofer Helgen, curator of mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, was the leader of the team that discovered the animal. “It's been kind of hiding in plain sight for a long time,” he said, reports the Associated Press.
image: Smithsonian Facebook
It turns out that one has been living at the National Zoo in Washington for a year, but was mistaken for an olingo. The animal, named Ringerl, who was transferred from zoo to zoo in the U.S. from 1967 to 1976 in attempts to get it to breed. But it wouldn’t breed with other olingos and now they know why.
Helgen began suspecting that olinguitos were actually a different species from the olingo when he began researching pelts and skeletons in museums. He then saw the species in the wild in 2006 and his team “found it in the very first night.”
“It looks kind of like a fuzzball ... kind of like a cross between a teddy bear and a house cat,” Helgen said, noting how different it is from an olingo.
New mammal discoveries are becoming increasingly rare into the 21st century. Heglen noted, “The discovery of the olinguito shows us that the world is not yet completely explored, its most basic secrets not yet revealed.”
So, now it’s up to the Internet to create the “Grumpy Olinguito.”