Olinguito

Meet the Olinguito, a tiny (2 lb.) member of the raccoon family, and the first carnivorous mammal to be discovered in 35 years.  The little buggers live in the treetops of the Andean Cloud Forests of Columbia and Ecuador, and although taxonomy classifies them as carnivores (and they do eat an occasional bug) their primary diet is fruit.

To claim they are a new discovery is true but somewhat misleading.  Kristofer Helgen, curator of mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who announced the animal’s discovery, first started looking for the creatures after seeing hides in a drawer – skins collected decades earlier – in a Chicago museum.

There may even have been one hiding in plain sight at the National Zoo in Washington.  For several years, the Olingo exhibit there featured one red-haired female who refused to mate with the slightly larger brownish-gray males in the enclosure.