40 Fun Facts About Kinkajou

Often mistaken for a monkey, the kinkajou is really a rainforest cousin of which familiar mammal?

Raccoon kin are meat-eaters by ancestry, yet the kinkajou's big eyes and gripping tail once led naturalists to file it with the primates.

A kinkajou's taste for which sweet food gave the animal its best-known nickname?

Honey put the first word in honey bear, a nickname the kinkajou shares with the sun bear of Southeast Asia.

Which 2021 animated musical stars a music-loving kinkajou carrying a love song to a retiring singer?

Vivo opens in a Havana plaza, where the kinkajou busks with his elderly owner before setting off with the song the old man never sent.

The name kinkajou comes from quincajou, an old Canadian French word for which fierce northern animal?

Wolverine was the word's first meaning: early European accounts confused the two animals, and the name ended up on a tropical fruit-eater instead.

Rotating its hind ankles backwards lets a kinkajou make which escape move on a tree trunk?

Reversible feet let a kinkajou climb down headfirst, a quick exit from tree-climbing cats, and run backward along a branch as fast as forward.

Which reality TV star needed a tetanus shot in 2006 after her pet kinkajou, Baby Luv, bit her?

Paris Hilton rang her publicist at 3 a.m. about her bleeding arm, and he took her to an emergency room. He later insisted kinkajous are not aggressive animals.

Which five-inch body part does a kinkajou use to reach nectar deep inside rainforest flowers?

Tongue length is one of the kinkajou's oddest features: slender and far-reaching, it also scoops the soft pulp out of ripe fruit.

Kinkajous are well known for feeding in which unusual position, with the tail and hind legs as support?

Hanging upside down frees a kinkajou's hands, so it can hold a small fruit in a one-handed grasp while it eats.

Which fruit, on offer all year in tropical forests, can make up half of a wild kinkajou's diet?

Figs may appeal for more than their abundance: they carry more calcium than most other tropical fruits.

Where does a wild kinkajou usually spend the daylight hours asleep, often with others from its group?

A tree hollow hides a sleeping kinkajou from daytime hunters; it curls up with its legs tucked and its tail wrapped over its head.

A Central American name for pet kinkajous joins the Spanish word for monkey to which big cat?

Lion plus monkey gives micoleón, a name that sums up the pet kinkajou's look: a primate-like body topped with the head of a small predator.

In which rainforest layer does a kinkajou spend nearly its whole life, crossing from tree to tree?

Canopy branches overlap enough that a kinkajou need not come to the ground to travel, one reason it faces few predators and is hard to study.

Although kinkajous den in family groups, which relative raises each baby with no direct help?

Its mother does the work alone, even 'parking' the weaned youngster in a nearby tree while she feeds; adult males just tolerate it and sometimes play.

By roaming between trees all night, a kinkajou performs which valuable service for the rainforest?

Seed dispersal by kinkajous works well: in one study, seeds that had passed through a kinkajou sprouted faster than cleaned or untouched ones.

Which country marks the northern edge of the kinkajou's range, which runs south to Bolivia and Brazil?

Mexico's kinkajous live east and south of the Sierra Madre, the northern limit of a range that takes in all of Central America.

In which US state have escaped pet kinkajous repeatedly turned up in homes, far north of their native forests?

Florida made headlines in 2016 when an escaped pet kinkajou curled up on the chest of a sleeping 99-year-old Miami woman, who woke up screaming.

Which Broadway star voiced the singing kinkajou hero of a 2021 animated musical released on Netflix?

Lin-Manuel Miranda also wrote the film's songs, having first pitched the story to DreamWorks in 2010, years before Sony revived it.

Which Southeast Asian tree-dweller is the only other mammal in the kinkajou's order with a prehensile tail?

Binturong, or bearcat, is much the larger of the two, and its urine smells like hot buttered popcorn.

The kinkajou, whose diet is about 90% fruit, belongs to which order of mammals?

Carnivora membership rests on ancestry and anatomy, not menu: the kinkajou still has the sharp canine teeth of its meat-eating relatives.

At what time of day do kinkajou group members groom and socialise before splitting up to forage?

Dusk is the social hour: after it the kinkajous separate and mostly feed alone, meeting again only at large fruiting trees.

Which rainforest lookalike, lacking a grasping tail, is often misidentified as a kinkajou in zoos?

Olingo and kinkajou look alike through parallel evolution, not close kinship, and the bigger kinkajou drives its double away when fruit is scarce.

Which huge raptor, strong enough to snatch sloths from branches, also preys on kinkajous in the rainforest?

Harpy eagle raids are one reason kinkajous hide before dawn: most predation is thought to happen by day, while they sleep in their dens.

Which Spanish nickname, meaning the crying woman, has the kinkajou earned with its screeches and barks?

La Llorona is better known as the wailing ghost of Latin American folklore, said to roam near water mourning her drowned children.

Field studies found that a typical kinkajou social group has which unusual make-up of adults?

Two males, one female is the usual set: the dominant male fathers most young, and the second male is thought to help defend the territory.

Thanks to its wide range, the kinkajou sits in which category of the IUCN Red List?

Least Concern is no all-clear: the population is falling, squeezed by forest loss and by hunting for pets, fur and meat.

In 2011 the CDC warned that pet kinkajous can carry which parasitic worm, dangerous if it reaches the brain?

Roundworm eggs pass in an infected kinkajou's droppings, so owners can pick them up by hand; in the brain the larvae can be fatal.

On which continent is the kinkajou thought to have evolved, long before it reached the Amazon?

North America is thought to be the kinkajou's cradle; its ancestors spread south in the Great American Interchange, once Panama's land bridge had formed.

In Peru, pet kinkajous are often called lirón, the Spanish word for which famously sleepy rodent?

Dormouse suits a pet that dozes through the day; Peruvians also describe the kinkajou as a 'bear-monkey'.

The second word of the kinkajou's scientific name, flavus, is Latin for which colour?

Golden yellow fits the tawny coat; the full two-word name is often glossed as 'golden drinker', a nod to the animal's taste for nectar.

Which insects turn up most often when wild kinkajous add animal protein to their fruit diet?

Ants are so well represented in some populations that biologists have argued the kinkajou should also count as an ant-eating specialist.

The first kinkajou described by science was wrongly said to come from the mountains of which island?

Jamaica was only a keeper's claim about an animal exhibited in London; a zoologist corrected the record to mainland South America in 1902.

The kinkajou's first scientific name, given in 1774, wrongly grouped it with which primates?

Lemurs it was: the name Lemur flavus rested on a muddle of two specimens, a kinkajou and a mongoose lemur from Madagascar.

Kinkajous, once overlooked in favour of bats, may be leading night-time pollinators of which tropical American tree?

Balsa flowers open in late afternoon and hold a pool of nectar up to an inch deep, which kinkajous lap up through the night.

Which mammal family, known in German as the 'small bears', counts the kinkajou among its members?

Procyonidae earned the name from their bear-like build, though the family is now thought to sit closer to weasels than to bears.

Field biologists use which name for the kinkajou's most common call, a two-part sound?

Snort-weedle calls start with one quick snort and run on into a string of 'weedle' notes, given whether the kinkajou is alone or in company.

Kinkajous mark territory with scent glands on the throat, the belly and which other spot?

Corners of the mouth carry the glands a kinkajou rubs along branches, leaving a scent described as pleasant, sweet and musky.

In which South American country is the kinkajou known by Dutch names such as rolstaartbeer?

Suriname's Dutch name means 'curl-tail bear', and the country is also the official home locality of the first kinkajou named by science.

Which long-snouted relative of the kinkajou forages by day in bands, holding its ringed tail erect?

Coati tails cannot grip the way a kinkajou's can; the upright tail simply keeps a band together in tall vegetation.

The kinkajou is the only living member of which genus, named by French zoologists in 1795?

Potos was set up by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier; some researchers now suspect its single species may really be several.

In Belize, the kinkajou goes by which English nickname, a nod to its habits after dark?

Night walker joins a long list of local names, among them 'night ape', used elsewhere for the same after-dark wanderer.