What Do You Get When a Pig and a Monkey Have a Baby? A Coati

(upbeat music)

[Voiceover] Alright so what are you?

Kind of a raccoon but also maybe a monkey

with the nose of a pig.

Well, raccoon is almost right.

It's the coati.

A close relative of this here trash panda.

It lives in South America and Mexico,

and it even roams the southwest United States.

Like a raccoon, the coati eats just about anything,

fruits, frogs, whatever.

But like a pig, it uses that long muscular nose

to root around in the leaf litter for grubs.

It can actually bend that snout up to 60 degrees

in any direction, so it's kind of like an elephant too.

The coati is just as comfortable up in the canopy.

Long nails help it scurry up trees,

and on it's way back down, it's ankles rotate backwards

so it doesn't plummet to it's death.

Oh, and that tail.

It's about the length of the rest of the body.

By flicking it back and forth, the coati bounces as

it runs along branches.

These are social animals, as you might have noticed.

Typically females will band together with their young

in groups as large as 30 individuals,

while males tend to lone wolf it.

So there you have it, the coati.

A critter that can't seem to figure out

what it wants to be.

Other than hungry.

It's definitely sure of that.