Transcript:

Today on Animal Fact Files we’re discussing ringtails. These may be the cutest animals you will never see. Okay to be fair there's a chance you could see them, but you'd have to look quick and you'd have to be out late at night. Ringtails get their common name from the rings on their tails– it's pretty straightforward; however, you'd be hard pressed to actually witness this ringed sight in the wild. Ringtails are sly, quick, clever creatures who are considered relatively common but almost completely obscure from layperson knowledge.

Also known as the ring-tailed cat, this animal is not a cat. It's cat sized, reaching about 28 inches (70 cm) long including its tail– for reference Chester is about 18 inches long not including his tail, but it's more closely related to another ring-tailed animal. No, not the lemurs of Madagascar; instead, the ringtail is closely related to the raccoon. Like raccoons, ringtails are restricted to the Americas with their range expanding from southwestern Oregon down to southern Mexico and reaching across the continent to Kansas. I wonder how many viewers living in the ringtail's range have ever seen one alive in the wild. I've lived where bobcats range for more than half my life, but I've only ever seen them in zoos– a fact I'm relatively grateful for considering I currently live in the woods on top of a mountain. 

Ringtails are smaller than raccoons and were even used as a sort of feral pet by miners decades ago. See, the ringtail would quickly lose its fear of the humans and bunk up with the people whose refuse attracted pests. The ringtail got shelter and the human had free pest control. For this reason the ringtail was once known as the miner's cat. Again, it's still not a cat. Raccoons and their relatives are more their own family and are more closely related to skunks than cats. Like the kinkajou, a ringtail can turn its back feet 180 degrees around so it can climb down a tree headfirst. Cats can not do that. Hence their propensity to get themselves stuck in trees.

Ringtails are fantastic climbers. They scale trees and rock walls with ease, generally preferring places with rocky outcrops to provide them shelter, though they happily rest in a tree hollow or cluster of roots. These mammals are nocturnal, spending the day snoozing away in their den and emerging at night to forage. Ringtails, like raccoons, are omnivores and generalists– they'll eat just about anything. Their main meals include small rodents, birds, insects, eggs, and fruit. In turn, they have to watch out for great horned owls, coyotes, the aforementioned bobcats, and even their own family members, those pesky raccoons. Told you they'll eat just about anything.

Ringtails are solitary outside of mating and raising their young. A male and female may den up in the springtime while they court, but eventually they go their separate ways and the mother takes care of the kids all on her own. Ringtail litters typically consist of two to four babies that take about eight weeks to wean and just over four months before they resemble adults. They're able to breed within their first year of life, though most don't until their second. In the wild, these animals can live five to ten years old!

Although they're known as ringtails their black rings don't fully connect all the way around their tail. The underside of the tail is more uniform in color with the black fading to a creamy gray. Another thing to note is that these raccoon relatives have the same number of teeth as their bandit-masked cousins. Like raccoons, ringtails have forty teeth!

For more facts on ringtails, check out the links below. Give a thumbs up if you learned something new today. Thank you to our Patrons SpikeSpiegel93, Dad, and everyone else for their support of this channel! And thank you for watching Animal Fact Files!