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.

Photo of Researcher Being Attacked by Coati in 1927!

What you're looking at was something I discovered over on the Smithsonian's site.

It's a researcher in Panama in 1927 named Molino. I don't have any other information about the man in the photo.

The caption simply reads:

"Coati (Nasua nasua) attacking Molino due to noise of shaking keys"

Having worked closely with coatis, I learned that this sound drives them crazy! It can be clattering silverware on the floor or the jangling of a set of keys like in the photo above. Because there's nobody out wandering around dropping their silverware or jangling their set of keys in the wild, many who study the coati wonder why the sound triggers such an aggressive response from most that hear it or similar metallic noises. I've seen coati rolled cat toys around like they might a tarantula if they were in the wild...without ever learning the behavior or ever having had an interaction with a tarantula.

I would love to hear peoples' thoughts as to what it is about jangling keys or metallic sounds that causes the coati to go a little mad. It's a fascinating response and behavior that I've always been curious to learn about.

Would love to hear some theories.

1879 Department of the Interior Study on the Coati

During my routine search on Amazon for coati-related items, I came across an interesting study published by the Department of the Interior...in 1879!

You can read more about the author and zoologist Joseph Asaph Allen on a Wikipedia about him. Purchase the book on Amazon or get it on Google Play Books for free!

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

Wonders of the Animal Kingdom - Or how to eat everything in the animal kingdom according to a kids' sticker book.

I've been wanting to get back to this blog for a while. I have a lot of new things to post but would rather feed them out gradually over time than posting them all at once and then having another lull in posting to this blog.

Just a couple of days ago i was killing some time in an antique store in south-ish Florida and came across an old animal book titled "Wonder of the Animal Kingdom" (sorry...didn't look at all the who published/illustrated info).

The book was like a sticker book where you would collect dozens of different kinds of animal stickers and put them in the book in a space for the sticker next to the corresponding animal.

Of course I had to thumb through it to see if there was any mention of a coati.

There was.

Awesome.

Then I read the little blurb describing the coatimundi next to the sticker and my face went blank at the last sentence..."Its snout it large and its meat has an excellent flavor."

Wait...whaaat? "...its meat has an excellent flavor"?

Then I read the blurb above it about "119. The Hog" which stated in the last sentence about that particular animal that "All meat from this domestic animal should be thoroughly cooked before it is eaten."

After a couple more pages of similarly weird descriptions of animals I put the book back in its place under a bunch of other books that no one will probably ever buy and walked off.

Here are the cover of the book and the sticker and blurb about the coati.

Thanks for continuing to read the blog despite the massive gap in posts and I look forward to sharing more awesome things about my absolute favorite animal...the coatimundi.

Snookum Bears on a Rampage!

Originally titled "They Want That-A-Way" and distributed by Universal International, this 1948 Castle film (they're the people that did all the old-school news and informational short film 'reels' from way back before television), was described as 'a trio of bears romping around the great outdoors'. In 1951, the errors of it being a trio and of it containing coatis instead of bears was mentioned in the 'oops-we-goofed' section of their catalog. "The coati is so cute we re-christened him 'Snookum Bear'. The film never really got any traction when it was released theatrically in 1949. So here now is a look at an amazing little short film about four coatis who take up residence on cowboy's ranch and cause a tiny bit of a disturbance in the process. Found via the blog, The Coati Kids