New Porcupine Species Found In Threatened Brazilian Jungle

A new species of tree-dwelling porcupine has been discovered by a team of Brazilian researchers in one of the world's most threatened habitats.

The new species turned up in a small pocket of forest in an area of Brazil's Northeastern Atlantic Forest known as the Usina Trapiche Forest Remnants Archipelago.

The nocturnal rodent is covered in dark brown spines with reddish tips.

Antonio Rossano Mendes Pontes, one of the researchers who made the discovery, said that because the rodent was found in a region where just two percent of the original forest habitat still exists, the porcupine must already be considered to be engendered.

While previously unknown to scientists, the creature is known by locals as a "coandu-mirim," so the researchers named the new species Coendou speratus

"In Latin, 'speratus' means hope, because we have to hope for its future," said Pontes, a zoology professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco, in a telephone interview with the Associated Press.

The porcupine is a vegetarian that feeds on immature seeds, pine nuts bark, leaves and fruit, the Cleveland Leader reports. The rodent usually stays in the forest's upper canopy and sleeps in hollowed-out tree holes during the day.

Deforestation is an obvious threat to the species, but humans are too, as locals have been reported to hunt the porcupine.

A study of the new porcupine species is published in the journal Zootaxa.