Short Documentary: Guy Rescues Over 250 Cats from Trees...and One Coati

Came across this short documentary about a fantastic human, Patrick Brandt, who rescues cats from trees.

Patrick (at the time of the documentary) has returned over 250 cats that like to go places they shouldn't, until the consequences of their bad decisions strand them somewhere, safely to their stressed owners.

One day Patrick was called to get something not a cat...

If you're reading this blog?

You already know what that exception was...

A coati.




If you'd like to follow Patrick and watch the situations he has to get these cats out of?
Here are his socials:
Rescue My Cat Official Site
Rescue My Cat Facebook
Piedmont Tree Climbing
Cat in a Tree Rescue Directory (in case you need someone to call where YOU live)

Peel Street Monster Updated!

One of the earliest posts on this blog was an entry about the "Peel Street Monster" that I'd read about in the magazine, Fortean Times.
At the time that it had been published, the internet was still in its infancy-ish stage. Information continues from humankind's collective history; things like old newspapers, newsletters and various periodicals are making their way online more and more quickly adding more information to stories we're already aware of.
One such story is that of the "Peel Street Monster" that I wrote about in one of the first posts on this blog back in 2009.
Since that time, the "Peel Street Monster" has also become known as the "Wolverhampton Monster". More information about the incidents surrounding the story have shown up in additional sources and a clearer picture of what actually took place from the moment the "monster" first attacked to its death at the hands of a teenager with a brick to the misunderstanding that it was allegedly attacking a baby (it wasn't) to being dumped in a gutter to discovering it was a female to discovering there was another coati as well that was never caught (which makes me wonder if that coati had anything to do with reports not long later of a troupe of coati a few miles from this story's location).
Author Thomas Fair has written a fantastic short article about this little moment in history...
A moment when one of the most interesting animals in the world became a monster...
And, like a lot of alleged monsters and misunderstood characters throughout human history?
Repeated a lesson that continues to haunt us...
Our primitive fear of what we don't understand.
A fear that, more often than not, has time and time again brought about violence against the innocent.
Like an innocent litle coatimund a long time ago whose only crime was being curious and unusual.

Jungle Shuffle - An Animated Movie with Coatis

It was brought to my attention in the comments of an older post that an animated feature film starring coatis is a thing now. Jungle Shuffle isn't the greatest, but I always root for little animation studios that try their hand at a big project like a full length film. Available on Netflix, Jungle Shuffle is about a rambunctious young coati named Manu who keeps messing things up. When his girlfriend Sacha is captured by a human, its up to him to rescue her and the typical sidekicks and antics of a bunch of cartoon animals vs bad humans ensues. At first I thought, "That's awesome! A cartoon with coatis!" Then I was kinda glad that the film wasn't really that great. If the film was any good and became popular coati might've become the fashionable pet-of-the-week for a little while.

Pop-Sci Monthly Article On The "Coati-Mondi" - Written 141 Years Ago in 1872!

This is just awesome.

Popular Science Monthly featured an article titled "THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSINS" that was written by Rev. S. LOCKWOOD, PhD and published in the December 1827 edition of the periodical. It even features a couple of sketches of the "coati-mondi" (one is posted above).

Being someone who's extremely interested in moments where the coati has turned up in history, this article absolutely fascinates me.

I'm not going to lie, it's an extremely wordy, adjective-filled article with the language of the day. Most people will just skim through it. For those familiar with the coati and its behaviors? Don't skim it. You'll miss some of the coolest stuff that will make you smile because you'll just nod your head that 141 years ago someone was dealing with an animal that's behavior has not a changed a bit.

Lockwood talks about the "Jack" getting into everything, describes the variations of the squeaky language that the coati "speaks", describes its love for eggs, talks about the perfuming of its tail, annoying other animals on the ship....and that's another thing...

This all takes place on a ship!

It's just a very cool moment in time when people were beginning to really document the world around them and exploration was in its modern infancy.

Take the time to read through it and really feel the time period and the environment in which it was written and you'll come away smiling that yet, once again, the coati nosed its way into another part of history.

Read the entire article here

Recent Study on Skulls - Coati Included

A recent study concerning the size of the frontal cortex in relation to proclivity to social activity in animals was carried out. About the coati:

"In her latest study, Sakai examined the digitally recreated brains of three species in the Procyonid family – the raccoon, the coatimundi and the kinkajou – and found the coatimundi had the largest frontal cortex. The frontal cortex is thought to regulate social interaction, and the coatimundi is by far the most social of the three animals, often living in bands of 20 or more."

The other three animals included in the study were hyenas, lions and raccoons. Read the rest of the very brief article