A new species of tree-dwelling porcupines has been found in Brazil north of the San Francisco River.
Named Coendou speratus, the creatures are different from other porcupines in that they are not totally covered in spikes, but rather lack long dorsal fur. The porcupines are also distinctive in their brownish-red tips. They are vegetarian and usually reside in the upper areas of trees, sleeping in tree trunk holes during the day. This particular species was found in the Brazilian Atlantic forest, a spot known for its biodiversity and known as the fourth most important location for species on Earth.
The porcupines were discovered by a team of researchers led by Antonio Rossano Mendes Pontes, a zoology professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco. Because only two percent of the Notheastern Atlantic Forest's original habitat remains, the new porcupines are already considered endangered.
"In Latin, 'speratus' means hope, because we have to hope for its future," Pontes said.
The team estimates that approximately four of the porcupines exist per square kilometer in the area where they were found. According to Pontes, however, it is unlikely that more of the porcupines reside outside the small forest area. While predators ranging from domesticated dogs to jaguars hunt the porcupines, humans are their most dangerous threat.
"People are responsible for logging, clear-cutting and setting fire to the forests and sometimes for hunting the porcupines themselves," Pontes said. "We began by researching all the literature that describes the fauna of the region, going all the way back to the first colonizers five centuries ago, and found out that many of the animals they described are extinct.
One of the incredible things with this discovery is that this species of porcupine is not mentioned at all in the literature and remained unknown to science to date. Given the rate of destruction in this area, where 98 percent of the original Northeastern Atlantic Forest has already been destroyed, imagine how many species have gone extinct before we even knew about them."
The findings of Pontes and his team are published in the journal Zootaxa.
