40 Fun Facts About Ringtail

Despite the nickname ring-tailed cat, the ringtail is a close relative of which familiar North American mammal?

Raccoon is right: both belong to the family Procyonidae, and genetic studies suggest their lineages split about 10 million years ago.

The ringtail has been the official state mammal of which southwestern US state since August 1986?

Arizona adopted the ringtail in the same law that named an official state reptile, fish and amphibian: a rattlesnake, a trout and a tree frog.

The ringtail's nickname miner's cat comes from the job it did in prospectors' cabins, which was what?

Catching mice earned tame ringtails a welcome in the camps and homes of early settlers, who kept them as companions as well as mousers.

A ringtail's hind feet can rotate 180 degrees, which lets the animal do what on cliffs and tree trunks?

Descend headfirst: with the hind feet turned around, the pads and claws keep their grip, so a ringtail runs straight down a trunk that a house cat would have to back down.

When are ringtails active, which is why visitors to the Grand Canyon rarely see these common animals?

At night is when ringtails hunt, and Grand Canyon rangers say they also use the dark to loot campers' packs, open trash cans and dumpsters.

On a ledge too narrow to turn around on, a ringtail can reverse direction by performing which gymnastic move?

A cartwheel lets a ringtail swap ends on a ledge or tree limb, one of several climbing tricks that include bouncing between the walls of a rock crack.

The ringtail's scientific name, Bassariscus astutus, translates as a cunning little version of which animal?

Fox is the root: Bassariscus joins a Greek word for the animal to a Latin ending meaning little, and astutus adds cunning.

A ringtail can survive for long periods in the desert without doing which of these?

Drinking water is optional for a ringtail: when its diet is rich in prey, fruit and insects, the moisture in that food can be all it needs.

Which bird of prey is named alongside coyotes and bobcats as a known predator of the ringtail?

Great horned owl tops the predator lists from the Grand Canyon to the Edwards Plateau; the same bird is one of the few regular hunters of skunks.

A captured ringtail defends itself by discharging what from glands near the base of its tail?

A pungent musk comes with sound effects: a seized ringtail also lets out a high-pitched, penetrating scream.

When threatened, a ringtail bristles its tail and arches it over its back to create which effect?

Look larger is the bluff: every hair on the banded tail stands on end as it curls forward, puffing up an animal that weighs only about two pounds.

What does a ringtail's long, bushy tail help the animal do as it crosses steep slopes and boulders?

Keep its balance: Grand Canyon rangers call ringtails extremely agile, and the animals are found from the canyon rim all the way down to the river.

How do adult ringtails usually live and den outside the brief breeding season?

Alone is the rule: a ringtail normally dens by itself, and the home ranges of neighbouring males do not overlap.

In which season do ringtails usually mate, before the females give birth in May or June?

Spring mating leads to a pregnancy of under two months, and a mother usually raises a litter of two to four young.

Ringtail kits are born with their eyes closed and keep them shut for roughly how long?

About a month passes before the eyes open: kits are born toothless and fuzzy, and they are fully furred by the time they can see.

The ringtail lives across which North American desert, famous as the home of the giant saguaro cactus?

Sonoran ringtails are only part of the story: the species also lives in the Chihuahuan and Great Basin deserts, wherever rocky ground offers shelter.

Which plant, best known as a Christmas decoration, do wild ringtails eat along with acorns and juniper berries?

Mistletoe joins persimmons and wild figs on the ringtail's plant menu, although the animal shows a preference for meat when it can get it.

Ringtails climb tight rock cracks with feet on one wall and back on the other, a move climbers call what?

Stemming gets a ringtail up a narrow crack, either with its back braced or with the right feet on one wall and the left feet on the other.

Stray ringtail records from Ohio and Alabama are blamed on the animal's habit of climbing aboard what?

Railroad cars carried stowaway ringtails hundreds of miles outside a natural range centred on the arid Southwest.

Which Asian tree-climber was once classified in the ringtail's family but now has a family of its own?

Red panda classification changed with molecular studies, which moved the species out of Procyonidae and into its own family, Ailuridae.

Which tropical forest animal of Central America is the ringtail's only living relative in the genus Bassariscus?

Cacomistle and ringtail look alike, but the tropical cousin has ears that end in a distinct point and tail markings that fade towards the tip.

A Mexican name for the ringtail comes from a word for half puma in which Indigenous language?

Nahuatl speakers called the animal tlahcomiztli; the same language gave English the words coyote, chocolate and tomato.

Because modern ringtails barely differ from forms millions of years old, they are sometimes given which label?

Living fossils is the label: remains assigned to the same species date back to the early Pliocene and turn up as far north as Washington state.

In which US state is the ringtail a Fully Protected species that may not be hunted or trapped?

California gives the ringtail the same Fully Protected status as the northern elephant seal, so none may be taken without state authorization.

The ringtail reaches the northern edge of its present range in the southwestern corner of which US state?

Oregon ringtails live in tanoak woodland and Douglas-fir forest rather than desert, and the state lists the species as Sensitive.

In which US state are ringtails common in the rocky country of the Edwards Plateau and the Trans-Pecos?

Texas has ringtails almost statewide, missing only from the Panhandle and plains, and camera traps show they are more common than sightings suggest.

Ringtails in which Latin American capital were studied for the way they use droppings to mark territory?

Mexico City ringtails kept returning to the same latrine spots, the non-random pattern other mammals use to post territorial signals.

Although fruit is a big part of the diet, ringtails belong to which order of mammals?

Carnivora membership is about ancestry rather than diet: the order also holds dogs, bears and seals, and the ringtail's own family is generally omnivorous.

Which category does the IUCN Red List give the ringtail, a species found widely across the American Southwest?

Least Concern is the lowest-risk category, though ringtails still die in traps set for other furbearing animals.

Long viewed as small cousins of the bears, ringtails and their kin are now thought closer to which mammals?

Weasels and the other mustelids are the nearer branch, yet German still calls the ringtail's relatives Kleinbären, or small bears.

Which misleading nickname for the ringtail borrows the name of a distantly related Old World mammal?

Civet cat is a double misnomer: the ringtail is only distantly related to true civets and to cats.

Ringtails do little economic harm, but they occasionally raid farms to take which kind of livestock?

Poultry losses are occasional, and the debt is repaid: as mid-sized hunters, ringtails help keep rodent numbers under control.

The pale bands on a ringtail's tail are thought to help it survive an attack by acting as what?

A decoy target draws the strike: a predator that grabs the tail instead of the body gives the ringtail a better chance of escaping.

Which two colours alternate in the bands that run along the ringtail's long, bushy tail?

Black and white bands number 14 to 16, and the dark ones do not quite meet on the underside of the tail.

The typical call of an adult ringtail is described as a loud, plaintive version of which sound?

A bark is the alarm call of both sexes, and a badly frightened ringtail can raise it to a growl or a scream.

Unlike its flat-footed relatives, the ringtail has a stance that puts more weight on which part of the foot?

Its toes carry more of the load, a stance called digitigrade, and some taxonomies cite it to place ringtails in a separate family.

Which family member is sometimes tolerated near a ringtail den and may play with the growing young?

The father may play with older young, but the mother does the raising, choosing the den and nursing the litter herself.

Tens of thousands of ringtails were trapped each year in the United States during the 1970s for what?

Their pelts never paid well: the coat is not of high quality and was generally used only as trim, fetching about $5.50 each in 1976–77.

The ringtail's range runs south through Mexico as far as which state, where it overlaps with a tropical cousin?

Oaxaca marks the southern limit of the ringtail's range, and the two species also share ground in the states of Guerrero and Veracruz.

Which group studied hundreds of species and then chose the ringtail as a state mammal in 1986?

Students picked four finalists in each category, and the ringtail beat the whitetail deer, the desert bighorn sheep and the javelina.