New Porcupine Species Discovered in Brazil

Posted on April 16, 2013

Mother Nature Network reports that a new porcupine species has been found in the Pernambuco Endemism Centre, an endangered forest ecosystem in Brazil. These porcupines inhabit the trees of the forest, but do not live as high up as an already known porcupine, C. nycthemera, which lives in the forest canopy. The newly discovered porcupines have been named Coendou speratus. Coendou is derived from the local name for the porcupine and "speratus" is the Latin word for hope.

Coendou speratus has dorsal quills with brownish red tips. It has a prehensile tail and consumes seeds.

A paper about the new porcupine species was published here in Zootaxa.

ANIMALS