Brown-tailed mongoose facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Brown-tailed mongoose |
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| Plate of Galidia olivacea, a synonym of the brown-tailed mongoose, from 1839. The tail is incomplete. | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Genus: |
Salanoia
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| Species: |
concolor
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| Brown-tailed mongoose range | |
The brown-tailed mongoose, brown-tailed vontsira, Malagasy brown-tailed mongoose, or salano (Salanoia concolor) is a species of mammal in the family Eupleridae. It is endemic to Madagascar. Its natural habitat is moist lowland tropical forest. It is threatened by habitat loss.
Taxonomy
The brown-tailed mongoose was first described in 1837 by French zoologist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire under the names Galidia unicolor and Galidia olivacea. He placed both in the genus Galidia, together with the ring-tailed mongoose (Galidia elegans), which is now recognized as the only species of that genus. However, the name unicolor had been a misprint for concolor, and the name was corrected in an erratum and in a later note by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. In 1865, John Edward Gray placed concolor and olivacea in their own subgenus of Galidia, which he called Salanoia. In 1882, St. George Jackson Mivart also separated olivacea and concolor from Galidia, and placed them in a separate genus Hemigalidia, without mentioning Salanoia. In his 1904 Index generum mammalium, Palmer noted that Salanoia, the first name to be published, was the proper name for the genus. Although Glover Morrill Allen, in 1939, still listed two species, which he called Salanoia olivacea and S. unicolor, by 1972 R. Albignac recognized a single species only, which he called Salanoia concolor. A second species of Salanoia, Salanoia durrelli, was described in 2010.
