Last week I gave you this specimen to have a go at identifying:

It’s not a specimen from the Dead Zoo for a change – this one is from the displays of Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid.

The image is missing the hind quarters and tails of the specimen, which was unfortunate, but also convenient for the purposes of the Mystery Object, since the tail on this specimen is very characteristic and would have made things a bit too easy:

Chris Jarvis came very close, with a nice cryptic hint at an Olingo – which is a member of the same small Subfamily that this species belongs to (the Potosinae), but Sallie Reynolds earned a gold star by asking the all important question about its tail.

The tail is important as a feature, since this specimen is one of just two species in the Carnivora to have a prehensile tail – the Binturong (which it’s not) and the Kinkajou Potus flavus (Schreber, 1774), which it is.

This is a species I’ve spoken about on the blog previously, so I won’t go into detail again here. I hope you enjoyed trying to work this one out – I love the fact that there are these lesser known, yet wonderful critters out there in the world – it reminds me of when I was a kid, just starting to discover the amazing diversity of life.