Kinkajous (Potos flavus) are tropical forest mammals related to raccoons. Just like pandas, despite being classified in the carnivores order, their diet is mainly plant-based, and just like pandas, they have a number of cool adaptations to support the arboreal lifestyle. For example, kinkajous can rotate their ankles and feet 180° and have a prehensile tail!
Today, we share a chromosome-length short read-only assembly for Darwin, the male kinkajou living at Moody Gardens. Darwin is an ambassador animal for Moody Gardens, which means he helps educate the public about his species.
Previously, we have shared the short-read, $1K assembly for the common raccoon, a first-ever assembly in the raccoon (Procyonidae) family. Check out how the species relate to each other below!
Read more about the assembly strategy for the common raccoon and the kinkajou in (Dudchenko et al., bioRxiv, 2018).
