Mammals
Tayra
Eira barbara · also called tayra, tolomuco, high-woods dog
The tayra is a big, dark, long-bodied weasel that bounds through the forests of Latin America by day, climbing, leaping, and swimming after almost anything it can eat. It is a serious fruit-eater as well as a hunter — and one tayra was filmed doing something very few animals do: stashing unripe fruit and coming back days later to eat it once it had ripened.
Overview
The tayra ranges from southern Mexico to northern Argentina, in lowland and montane forest, secondary growth, and plantations. Head and body run 55–70 cm with a bushy 35–45 cm tail, and it weighs 2.5–7 kg. The body is long and muscular, usually dark brown to black with a paler head and often a pale throat patch, though the colour varies enormously between individuals.
A versatile forager
The tayra eats fruit, small mammals, birds, eggs, reptiles, invertebrates, and honey. Fruit is a large part of the diet, making the tayra an important seed disperser. It climbs and leaps through the canopy, bounds across the ground, and swims well, so no level of the forest is out of reach.
Planning ahead
On an island in Panama, researchers recorded tayras harvesting green plantains, hiding them, and returning about three days later to eat them once ripe. Storing an unusable item and coming back when it has become useful is a kind of future planning shown clearly in only a few animals — mostly great apes and crows.
Status
The tayra is Least Concern but declining in places as forest is cleared and as animals are killed near farms for raiding poultry — a habit that makes them unpopular despite their value in hunting rats and mice.
Tayra: common questions
What kind of animal is a tayra?
It is a mustelid, a member of the weasel family, and one of the larger ones, roughly the size of a small dog but built like a stretched-out weasel with short legs, a long body, and a bushy tail. Its closest relatives are the martens and the wolverine. It is the only species in its genus. In the Americas it fills a niche a bit like that of a marten or fisher further north, a fast, versatile, semi-arboreal hunter and fruit-eater of the forest, and it is one of the most frequently seen forest carnivores across much of Latin America.
Do tayras really plan ahead?
There is at least one well-documented case. Biologists working on Barro Colorado Island in Panama recorded tayras picking plantains while the fruit was still hard and green, which is inedible, carrying them away, and hiding them. Several days later, when the plantains had ripened where they were stashed, the tayras returned and ate them. Taking an unusable item, storing it, and coming back once it has become useful is a form of planning for the future that has been shown clearly in only a handful of animals, mainly great apes and some corvids, so the observation drew a lot of interest.
Is a tayra dangerous to people?
Not really. Tayras are wary of humans and normally flee, and there is no pattern of them attacking people. They can defend themselves fiercely if cornered or handled, with a strong bite and sharp claws, like any wild carnivore, and they carry the usual risks of a wild mammal such as disease. The main friction with people is over livestock, since a tayra will raid a hen house given the chance, and this leads to tayras being trapped or shot around farms even though they also help by hunting rats and mice.
What does a tayra sound like?
Tayras are fairly vocal, especially in family groups and when alarmed. Their calls include short barks and yaps, a rising screech or scream, growls, and a clicking or chittering sound used between group members. A startled tayra crossing a trail will often give a sharp bark before bounding away. Kits are noisy, with high-pitched calls to the mother. Because the animal is usually glimpsed briefly, many people who live alongside tayras know the calls better than the animal itself.