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Kinkajou — printable fact sheet
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Kinkajou
Potos flavus
Potos flavus is regularly mistaken for a monkey or a lemur, and it is neither - it is a procyonid, in the raccoon family, and its resemblance to a primate is convergence on the same arboreal, fruit-eating niche. Its prehensile tail is the giveaway: kinkajous are the only carnivo…
Did you know?
- Kinkajous can rotate their feet backwards, allowing them to run easily in either direction along branches and climb down trees head-first.
- Kinkajous have scent glands on the throat, chest and belly that they rub along branches to mark territory, so a well-used kinkajou route through the canopy is a scented map. They are the only carnivorans besides the binturong with a fully prehensile tail, an adaptation that evolved independently from that of New World monkeys. Their teeth are those of a carnivore - they have carnassials - but they eat almost nothing but fruit and nectar, one of the sharpest mismatches between anatomy and diet among mammals.
What I learned
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