Scientists Discover New Animal
August 27, 2013
Olinguito weighs only one kilogram.
From VOA Learning English, this is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS. I’m June Simms.
And I’m Bob Doughty. Today we tell about a new animal species native to South America. We tell how agricultural chemical products are harming frogs in northern California. And we have a report about elephants and how the night sky could affect the timing of their raids on farms.
Meet the new mammal! The olinguito is new to science, although it has been living in the cloud forests of South America for some time, unknown to researchers.
Scientists say the olinguito is the first new carnivore discovered in the Americas in more than 30 years. It is a hairy orange-brown creature with a sweet face and big eyes. The animal has small, rounded ears and lives in the trees. An adult weighs one kilogram and measures about 75 centimeters, with half of those centimeters taken up by its ringed tail.
The olinguito shares its family roots with raccoons and kinkajous. Most of the time, it likes to eat fruit, although it also eats meat. Active at night, the animal has lived in Colombia and Ecuador for a long time. But the olinguito did not exist in science books before now.
Kristofer Helgen is the curator of mammals at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington. He led the research team that confirmed the existence of the olinguito. It had been mistaken more than a century ago for a look-alike animal -- a similar but larger olingo.
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