White Nosed Coati (Nasua narica)

These raccoon relatives are not super common in zoos.

The white-nosed coati runs down trees headfirst. Its ankles rotate a full 180 degrees, allowing the hind feet to point backward and grip the bark on the way down. Most mammals that climb trees have to back down or jump. The coati turns around at the top and sprints down the trunk face-first as if gravity were optional. It is a tropical relative of the raccoon, and it lives wild in the mountains of southern Arizona.

It was originally classified as two separate species because the males and females live such different lives that early naturalists did not believe they were the same animal.

The coati looks like someone combined a raccoon, an anteater, and a lemur and let it loose in the desert. It is about three and a half feet long, half of that being a banded tail it carries straight up in the air like a periscope. It has a long, flexible nose that bends and swivels as it roots through leaf litter, a dark face mask, and bear-like paws with curved claws built for digging and climbing.

Females and juveniles travel together in troops of up to thirty, walking through the oak woodlands and rocky canyons of the Sky Islands with their tails held high so they can see each other in tall grass. They forage together, babysit each other's young, and sleep together in trees at night. When one member spots a predator the entire troop leaps into the branches making clicks and barking sounds. They communicate constantly through grunts, chitters, squeals, and facial expressions, and they can recognize each other individually by sight, voice, and scent from glands on their necks and bellies.

Males are kicked out of the troop at age two. From that point they live alone, wandering solitary through the same country, and rejoin a female troop only during the breeding season in early spring. Even then, the dominant male must groom and submit before the females will accept him. Once mating is finished, the troop drives him out again, because adult males kill juveniles. The word coatimundi comes from the Guaraní language of Brazil and means lone coati. It was the name given to the solitary males, which early observers genuinely believed were a separate species from the social females. The two lived so differently that it took decades of observation to confirm they were the same animal at different stages of life.

The name coati itself comes from two Tupi words meaning belt and nose, a reference to the way they sleep with their snouts tucked against their bellies. The Tohono O'odham of southern Arizona had no word for the animal when they first began encountering it in their territory, so they adapted their Spanish loan word for monkey, chango, because the coati climbed like one.

They eat everything. Beetles, tarantulas, scorpions, centipedes, mice, lizards, frogs, cactus fruit, berries, bird eggs, and nectar. When they catch a tarantula they roll it on the ground first to scrub off the irritating hairs before eating it. In Costa Rica, researchers documented coatis sticking their noses deep into the flowers of balsa trees to drink nectar, emerging with faces coated in pollen, effectively serving as pollinators for a tree that most people associate with bees and hummingbirds.

Throughout Central and South America, coatis have been hunted for centuries for both their meat and their pelts. In parts of their range they are still taken regularly as bushmeat. At the same time, they have a long history of semi-domestication. Coatis are intelligent, curious, and can bond with people if raised young. Indigenous communities across Central America have kept them as household animals, and they remain common in the exotic pet trade today. They are not docile in the way a dog is. They are affectionate, demanding, destructive, and equipped with claws and teeth that remind you quickly that you are living with a wild carnivore. The Smithsonian National Zoo notes that distemper and rabies affect coati populations, and escaped or released pets are one of the ways the species has established itself outside its native range, including in southern Florida.

The white-nosed coati ranges from southern Arizona and New Mexico through Central America to Colombia. It has been expanding northward in Arizona for over a century. Sightings now extend as far north as Flagstaff. In New Mexico, the species is listed as endangered at the state level.

Instead of doing a normal oc introduction, I’m introducing this new guy with a short animatic type thing I made

This is Dexter Nasua! He’s a South American coati who’s from Costa Rica and he’s Neil’s lawyer! He’s a pretty important character in the story, serving mostly as a moral compass because Neil treats him more like a therapist than an actual lawyer.

Decided to draw caoti Miku for this month's vgen challenge!