Developments in Brief : ‘Extinct’ Soft-Spined Porcupine Makes Reappearance in Brazil Coastal Forest

An unusual soft-spined porcupine that had been feared to be extinct has been rediscovered in Brazil’s rapidly disappearing Atlantic coastal forest.

The animal, known as the thin-spined porcupine (Chaetomys subspinosus), is about the size of a small cat and is covered with soft, brown spines that resemble the flexible bristles of a broom. It was first described in 1818 and was last seen in 1952. Until its rediscovery, only a single photograph of the animal was known to exist, according to Russell Mittermeier of the World Wildlife Fund-U.S.

He said researchers know so little about the porcupine that they cannot even be sure that it is a true porcupine. “No one is sure what it really is. It shares characteristics with both the spiny rats and the porcupines.”

The creature’s present categorization makes it the last surviving member of a sub-family of animals that seem to occupy a niche between porcupines and spiny rats.

Brazilian biologist Ilmar B. Santos discovered the animal in December while surveying the northernmost region of the Atlantic coastal forest, in the state of Bahia.

It is a nocturnal animal and it dwells in the trees, where it moves like a monkey with the help of a grasping, or prehensile, tail, Mittermeier said. The tail distinguishes it from North American porcupines, which cannot grasp limbs with their tails.

The forest is home to a variety of exotic species found nowhere else in the world, including some of the most endangered species in all of South America, Mittermeier said. But 95% of it already has been destroyed by encroaching civilization.