Mammals
Kinkajou
Potos flavus · also called kinkajou, honey bear, night walker, la llorona
The kinkajou is a raccoon relative that took up the monkey lifestyle. Golden-furred and round-eyed, it spends its whole life in the rainforest canopy, swinging from a prehensile tail, running headfirst down trunks on reversible ankles, and licking nectar and honey out of flowers and bees’ nests with a tongue longer than its face.
Overview
Kinkajous live in lowland tropical forest from southern Mexico to southeastern Brazil, almost entirely in the canopy. They are nocturnal and eat mostly ripe fruit — especially figs — plus nectar, flowers, honey, and insects, making this carnivoran largely vegetarian. They are 40–60 cm with a tail just as long.
A fifth hand
The kinkajou’s muscular prehensile tail can support its entire weight. It uses it to hang, bridge gaps, and lean out to feed, and wraps it around itself like a blanket when sleeping. Its ankles rotate ~180°, so it can run head-first down a trunk like a squirrel.
The honey bear
An extensible tongue up to 12 cm long reaches deep into flowers for nectar and into bee and wasp nests for honey and grubs — hence “honey bear.” Feeding this way, nectar-drinking kinkajous carry pollen between night-blooming flowers, making them genuine forest pollinators, and by swallowing fruit whole they disperse seeds widely.
Not a pet
Kinkajous are nocturnal, strong, sharp-toothed, and can turn unpredictably aggressive as adults — Paris Hilton’s pet kinkajou famously bit her. They also carry a roundworm dangerous to people.
Status
The kinkajou is Least Concern but declining with deforestation and hunting for the pet trade, fur, and meat.
Kinkajou: common questions
Is a kinkajou a primate, a bear, or a monkey?
None of those, although it looks and behaves like a small monkey or a lemur. The kinkajou is a carnivoran in the family Procyonidae, which makes its closest relatives the raccoons, coatis, olingos, and ringtails of the Americas. Its monkey-like traits — living in the canopy, a grasping prehensile tail, forward-facing eyes, dexterous hands, a fruit diet, and nocturnal habits — all evolved independently as adaptations to the same arboreal, fruit-eating lifestyle. The names "honey bear" and "night walker" reflect how often people have tried to file it under a more familiar animal. It is one of only two carnivorans (with its cousin the binturong) to have a truly prehensile tail.
What does a kinkajou use its tail for?
Everything a fifth limb would do. The kinkajou's tail is as long as its body, thickly muscled, and fully prehensile — it can hang from it with no other support. Moving through the canopy, the animal uses the tail as an anchor and a safety line, gripping one branch while reaching for the next, and as a counterbalance. Feeding at the end of a thin branch, it hooks the tail around a stem so it can lean out and use both hands. Resting or sleeping, it curls the tail around itself like a blanket or wraps it around a branch. Young kinkajous even grip their mothers with it.
Do kinkajous make good pets?
They are kept as exotic pets, most famously by the socialite Paris Hilton, whose kinkajou bit her and sent her to hospital, but they are a poor choice for almost everyone. Kinkajous are strictly nocturnal, so they are active and noisy at night and stressed by daytime handling; they are strong, quick, and equipped with sharp teeth and claws; and even hand-raised individuals can become unpredictably aggressive, especially as they mature, delivering serious bites. They need a large climbing space, a specialised fruit-based diet, and decades of care. They can also carry a roundworm (Baylisascaris) that is dangerous to humans. Many "pet" kinkajous end up surrendered to sanctuaries.
Why is the kinkajou important to the rainforest?
Chiefly as a seed disperser and a pollinator. Because fruit, especially figs, dominates its diet, a kinkajou swallows large numbers of seeds whole and deposits them, still viable, across the forest as it travels — helping many tree species regenerate away from the parent tree. When it feeds on nectar, it pushes its face and long tongue into large night-blooming flowers (such as those of balsa and some vines) and comes away dusted with pollen, which it carries to the next flower. Relatively few mammals pollinate plants, and a fruit-and-nectar-eating carnivoran doing so is unusual enough that kinkajous are singled out in studies of tropical pollination.