Rare new mammal species ‘hiding in plain sight’

Imagine a mini-raccoon with a teddy-bear face so cute it is hard to resist, let alone overlook.

But somehow, science did — until now.

Researchers announced Thursday a discovery of a new species of mammal called the olinguito, a furry reddish-brown animal that’s about 2 feet long with a long tail and weighs about 2 pounds.

The nocturnal creature is considered the smallest member of the raccoon family of mammals, and could be existent throughout many parts of Central and South America.

So far, though, the species has only been found leaping through the trees of the mountainous forests of Ecuador and Colombia, according to a Smithsonian researcher who has spent the past decade tracking them.

It turns out the adorable olinguito should not have been this hard to find.

One of them actually lived in the Smithsonian-run National Zoo in Washington for a year in a case of mistaken identity.

“It’s been kind of hiding in plain sight for a long time” despite its extraordinary beauty, said Kristofer Helgen, the Smithsonian’s curator of mammals.

The little zoo critter, named Ringerl, was mistaken for a sister species, the olingo. Before she died in 1976, Ringerl was shipped from zoo to zoo throughout the U.S. to try to get it to breed with other olingos.

She would not.

“It turns out she wasn’t fussy,” Helgen said. “She wasn’t the right species.”

A study of the discovery has been published in the academic zoological journal ZooKeys.

Helgen first figured olinguitos were different from olingos when he was looking at pelts and skeletons at Chicago’s Field Museum.

“I pulled out a drawer … and said ‘Wow,’ ” Helgen recalled of his first view of the misidentified Ringerl specimen. “It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

Helgen said the teeth and skull of the specimen were much different from those of the olingo, which is larger than the olinguito, and has more prominent ears.

He said he could have published this finding in a scientific journal then, but in the interest of being thorough, he sought out colleagues to confirm the existence of the new species in its natural habitat. Helgen later led a team to South America in 2006.

“When we went to the field we found it in the very first night,” said study co-author Roland Kays of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. “It was almost like it was waiting for us.”

It’s hard to figure how olingos and onlinguitos were confused for each other.

“How is it different? In almost every way that you can look at it,” Helgen said.

Olinguitos are smaller, have shorter tails, a rounder face, tinier ears and darker bushier fur, he said.

“It looks kind of like a fuzzball … kind of like a cross between a teddy bear and a house cat,” Helgen said.

The animal is considered a carnivore, and although it eats mostly fruit it does have teeth that look fully capable of eating meat, Helgen added. The species has one baby at a time, and Helgen figures there are thousands of them traveling through the trees of mountainous forests at night.