Coati

The coati is an agile, fruit-loving, meat-eating insectivore—an opportunistic omnivore—that is as at home in the trees as it is snuffling along the forest floor. Weighing as much as a large housecat, these mostly diurnal mammals are native to Central and South America, and parts of the southwestern US. Visually, the coati resembles a cross between a dog, a monkey, and a raccoon. It is related to the racoon.

Wherever they live, coatis play an important mid-level role in food chains. They consume a wide range of insects, invertebrates, and plant matter (fruit, nuts, roots, leaves), and small vertebrates. They are prey for wildlife like jaguars, ocelots, jaguarundis, foxes, boas, birds of prey, and even humans. Being mid-food chain has its perks…and its downside.

With its tail up posture, long, mobile snout, and formidable front claws, the coati sniffs along the forest floor in search beetles, grubs, ants and termites, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, frogs, lizards, and other assorted prey. Its long, muscular, semi-prehensile tail helps it balance in the trees; on the ground its tail usually stands straight up, perhaps helping them keep track of each other in the vegetation.

Four’s company.  There are four types of coatis (pronounced ko-AH-teez), two in the Nasua genus and two in the Nasuella genus. The white-nosed coati Nasua narica ranges from Arizona to northwestern Colombia; N. nasua ranges from Colombia to northern Argentina and Uruguay.

The mountain coati Nasuella olivacea ranges from the Andes of western Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and northern Peru. It appears to be uncommon across its range; its upland forest habitat is being converted to agriculture and pine plantations, putting more pressure on the coati. Nasuella meridensis lives in northern Venezuela, and it is Endangered.

Name it.  According to The Encyclopedia of Mammals, coati is not short for "coatimundi." Females and their young form bands of 20 individuals or more, while adult males are solitary. This difference in social structure (and males being larger than females) confused biologists, who initially described the solitary males as a separate species. The use of “coatimundi,” meaning “lone coati” in Guarani (an Indigenous language of Brazil), for males reflects this error. Now, only lone males are sometimes called coatimundi, although they are coatis, too.

Use your head.  In an elegant study that appeared in “Brain, Behavior and Evolution,” scientists compared brain size of males and females in three procynonid species: raccoons, kinkajous, and coatis. The only sex difference in neural brain tissue was in the social coatis. Females possessed a larger frontal cortical volume than their male counterparts due to their expanded, lifelong social ties. It takes brain power to make and keep friends! The study supports the principle that “behavioral specializations correspond to an expansion of neural tissue involved in that function.” Hopefully, female coatis won’t get a big head about it.

Put some rings on it!   The mountain coati’s elongated body is grayish sooty brown with a notable bushy tail that is ringed with yellowish gray and dark brown bands. Its flexible, pointed, pig-like snout, used for sniffing out food under leaf litter and in crevices, has earned it the nickname “hog-nosed raccoon.” The coati has double-jointed ankles which can rotate 180 degrees which allow it to climb down tree trunks head first. Strong front claws are ideal tools for excavating grubs, lizards, and spiders from logs and burrows.