Untitled Document
 Can
you guess what animal is in the picture? Most of you don’t know what
it is. Why? It is because this animal is a newly found mammal!
On August 15, scientists from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington,
D.C. announced that they had discovered
a new species of mammal in South America.
It is a lovable animal, called the
“olinguito!”
As you see in the picture, it looks like half cat, half teddy bear.
In fact, it is a member of raccoon family. It lives
mostly in the cloud forests
of Colombia and Ecuador. It rarely comes out of the trees,
which are its home. Fruit is their main food.
 This unique
animal has long been wrongly identified. This is because it looks
like its larger close cousin, the olingo. Oliguito’s
teeth and body are smaller and shaped differently, compared to those
of the olingo. And its orange brown fur is longer and denser than
the olingo.
“The discovery of the olinguito shows us that the world is not yet
completely explored, its
most basic secrets not yet revealed,” Smithsonian zoologist
Kristofer M. Helgen, who led the effort to identify the olinguito, told
the Smithsonian magazine. |
Staff
reporter Michelle Kang
(bubibi@timescore.co.kr) |
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