The kodkod (guiña), the smallest cat in the Americas, is an elusive and critically endangered species facing significant threats due to habitat loss, human conflict, and low genetic diversity, necessitating urgent conservation efforts.
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Meet the kodkod. The smallest cat in the americas.. The cat with the smallest range and
second smallest willd population in South America with about 10,000 individuals in the wild. And one
of the lowest genetic diversities ever recorded among mammals. Everything about this cat is small,
including our knowledge of it. But we’re going to change that. In
this episode we’ve collected nearly all the existing footage of this kitty,
and even getting face to face with one of the few kodkods in captivity in the world.
And we’re heading into the legendary valdivian rainforest to see if we can
find the legendary kodkod.
And this is one of the weirdest places ever been to in the best possible way. Everything
looks so ancient and alien.
Hi, I’m Danielle Dufault and you’re watching Animalogic: Small Cats Unknown. Today we’re
looking at the kodkod, also known as the guiña, the smallest cat in the Americas.
We’re going to use those two names interchangeably, but don’t worry,
they mean the same thing.
At just 75 cm in length, and weighing a maximum of 2.5 Kg, they’re smaller than a chihuahua.
They’re part of the leopardus genus along with 7 other south american small cats.
They have adapted to life in a very specific corner of the world, and have evolved to be almost
invisible to predators, prey, and humans. But don’t let their elusiveness fool you.
These cats have a deep bag of tricks, including swimming, an extremely rare behaviour among
wildcats. —------
Their range, the part of the world where they live, is basically divided in two, which
has resulted in two distinct subspecies. The northern kodkod of the drylands and mountains
of northern and central Chile, is slightly larger and has a sandier-coloured coat.
The Southern guiña, from the ancient rainforests of southern chile are smaller, and have darker
coats and a more pronounced spotted pattern. It thrives in Chiloé Island, so it gives us the best
chance to see them in the wild for ourselves. This southern subspecies also has a larger number
of melanistic cats. Aww. Mini panthers. They’re so well adapted to be almost
invisible that very little is known about these cats. There’s very little
available footage and information about them is just starting to emerge.
We sent our Latin American correspondent, Andrés, to investigate and see how we’re learning
about these cats. He’ll be reporting from the jungles of Chile throughout the episode.
His first stop is the habitat of the Northern kodkod, the Chilean matorral. These rugged
forests are home to some of the most emblematic predators in Chile.
It’s an ecological hotspot full of amazing species, so it was the
perfect spot to start our adventure.
is a place where mountains and valleys meet. So the animals of the valley and the animals
of the mountains all come here at the same time. And there's a lot of people and people
bring food. So kodkods are going to come here to get the food from the mountains,
the food from the valley and the food from the people, and by food from the people I mean,
chickens and you know, like any other small livestock they might have, which is not great
for them and is one of the issues that are facing right now because some people don't like them,
especially the older generation. So that's one of the main challenges that we're facing here, is
trying to get people to love kodkods, even though sometimes they might eat their chickens.
Of course, Andres is not alone in this adventure. He’s following one the world’s
leading kodkod experts. Hi, I'm Diego Ramirez
from Guiña Working Group.
and research organization devoted to understanding the kodkod.A lot of what we know about kodkods
comes from their trapcam footage, and finding the best place to set up the cameras is key.
We are going to put this camera trail in the tree. So we try to take some
pictures of the natural environment to try to understand a little more the ecology of
this so cryptic and elusive cat.
on the forest. Some research projects might have hundreds of cameras spread around a small area,
all hoping to catch a glimpse of an elusive species.
This is a flashlight. And this is where they come in and take some. So any food or any animal,
The camera will take a video, so that way we can understand more about the behavior
of the cat.. And, first of all, to know if we have the kodkod here,
what kind of landscapes they use, and understand even more about their behavior, richness,
and other ecological parameters.
The more sensitive they are, the more pictures they take. But it also makes it much more time
consuming to screen all the pics. Part of the difficulty in studying these
cats is the sheer amount of work required to see all the pictures. Especially in
ecologically busy places, you could get thousands of irrelevant pictures.
But then, one day, you hit the jackpot.
found a kodkod nest inside a dead tree. It was a mom and a single baby .
—-- This confirms other trapcam footage where
it’s usually a mother with a single baby. This low reproductive rate is unfortunately bad news for
their conservation, but more on that later. Trapcams are part of the puzzle, but they
can’t tell the whole story. One of the greatest threats to
kodkod conservation is accidental trapping, which unfortunately often costs them their lives.
Chile has a surprising invader. It eats a lot, carries diseases, and reproduces like… rabbits.
It’s of course the European hare. European hares were introduced to South
America in the 19th century. The plan was to give hunters an animal species that
could reproduce quickly, so that there would always be enough of it to hunt and eat.
But the hare is famous for two things: Being quick and reproducing even quicker.
And soon after they were introduced they had spread throughout the continent.
Hunters still catch them, and they often use inhumane traps called huichas. These
traps tighten around the neck or leg, leading to long and painful deaths.
It’s really too sad to show you, but imagine a wire slowly tightening around a leg,
cutting all the way to the bone. And to make matters worse, sometimes
they catch other animals, like kodkods, which often die, or get very injured.
Fortunately, some kodkods get rehabilitated and re-released.
One of these places is Casa Noe.
animals throughout the year, and on some very rare occasions they get kodkods.
Rehabilitation is a tough road but sometimes we get beautiful images like this.
Or this beautiful orphaned kodkod kitten rescued in the island of Chiloé. The baby was taken to
Chiloé Silvestre, a conservation centre, where it was rehabilitated for 5 months, until it was
old enough to be free. Then it was taken into the forest and set free. They even got multiple
angles of the kitties' first leaps of freedom. It’s so cute. Makes me emotional seeing those
little kitties sprint into freedom after being hurt and scared for so long.
But as we all know by now, not every injured animal can be rehabilitated.
Hey, we're in Linares, Chile. We are seeing one of the few captive kodkods in the world. This
place here does an amazing job in rehabilitation. Cats sometimes come here with leg injuries. They
fix them up and send them back into the wild. But sometimes they can't get released back into
the wild. They stay here where they live the best life they can. So take a look at this guy.
This is an Animalogic exclusive. Few people have ever been able to see a live kodkod and
even fewer have been allowed to film them. There’s only a handful of güiñas in captivity and
though it’s sad that they can’t ever live in the wild again. Their stories are powerful reminders
of the dangers kodkods face in the wild. The two here were victims of hare traps and
unfortunately got so injured that they wouldn’t survive in the wild. One of them lost a front paw,
but it doesn’t seem to bother it too much.
you could be a stone’s throw away and fully miss it. And that’s good! That’s their job.
Kodkods are specialist ambush predators.
all that’s required to secure a meal. The stripes, the quiet steps, the ability to stay eerily quiet,
it’s all a masterclass in stealth. In these ecosystems the kodkod rules with an invisible
thumb. —--
East of the Andes, its closest relative, the Geoffrey's cat has adapted to a wide
range of habitats and prey across the grasslands, savannas, and forests of Eastern South America.
The relative absence of natural barriers has made it a very adaptable species.The
guiña doesn’t have that opportunity.
the andean mountains, the pacific ocean, and the atacama desert.
This cat is a dense forest specialist. But in this small pocket of land, the smallest range
of all New World cats, it has established itself as one of top predators of small prey.
For the southern subspecies, the Valdivian forest is their home. This
is a rainforest with cooler temperatures than other south american jungles.
The Andes rise close to the pacific, creating a high altitude humid zone with amazing endemic
wildlife. Almost half of the wooded plant species here can’t be seen anywhere else in the world.
Andrés went to the Valdivian forest to look for kodkods. Let’s see if he survived.
The number 1 spot to see kodkods is the island of Chiloé, off the coast of Chile.
Vlog Hey. I’m in Chiloe now. Look
at that. It actually reminds me a lot of British Columbia in Canada in that temperate rainforest
vibe. But this place is more isolated than British Columbia. And there are things here that are
nowhere else in the world. So I'm just going to go out into the forest, see what I can find.
Finally after a few hours of driving into the hills: the rainforest.
We’re going deep into a jungle here. And this is one of the weirdest places ever been to in
the best possible way. Everything looks so ancient and alien and unique. You might not
see it from this angle, because this camera is not meant for that. But I'll show you some of
the weird things that are here.
only see a few feet ahead of you.You almost think is there a kodkod right in front of me,
and I'm just not seeing it? If I look hard enough I almost see little eyes and little ears poking
out behind a branch or something. And, you kind of start seeing it without actually being there
because your brain just gets so alert about anything that remotely looks like a cat.
This is the home of Incredible animals. The monito del monte, an odd marsupial
related to the Australian branch of the family, lives among the trees.
Darwin's frog and Darwin’s Fox, first described by the Big D himself, enjoy the humidity and
cover this forest provides. Birds like the black-faced ibis and
the fire-eyed diucon love the weather and the food the forest provides.
There’s also some of the most famous prey of the kodkod. A little bird who spends more time on the
ground than flying.
the most iconic birds here.
bird with a call and a fiery red chest. For any of these species, a walk in the
woods is a dangerous proposition. Lurking somewhere in the shadows is the kodkod, who
is always looking for a petite dinner. But of all of them, the most striking is the
largest known kodkod meal. The pudu.
and we saw our first pudu. You can’t see it from here, but it's just sitting in those plants over
there. It is so tiny. It's super cute.
just slightly larger than a Pomeranian. This proud momma and her adorable baby seemed comfortable
with Andres filming them for a while. The baby even approached him for a split second.
And his mom followed soon after. —--
There’s a single video evidence of a kodkod eating a pudu.
It was taken by a park ranger, but it was impossible to tell if the kodkod caught it,
or if it just happened to stumble upon a sick or injured pudu. We’ll know more about the
kodkod’s diet with more research. Or by miraculously running into one on a
jungle trek. But unfortunately, that wasn’t a miracle that would happen to us
So we're getting to the end of the trail and you going to come out feeling like, did I miss
something? Was there something amazing just right beside me I just just didn't see. And the answer
is probably yes. There's so many things here and they're so good at hiding. And we're so noisy
and so big for these forests. But even though I didn’t see a kodkod, I'm not disappointed. I mean,
it's just an amazing forest. A magical place. VO
The odds were always against him. The forest is dense and massive and there’s only a few
thousand small cats on an island the size of Puerto Rico. Kodkods are also mostly nocturnal
and spend most of their days hiding in trees and in bushes. But it’s amazing to see the
kodkod’s natural habitat and the majesty of one of the most amazing ecosystems on Earth.
Thanks Andres! VO
Outside of the rainforest, kodkods have been running into humans for
hundreds of years. It’s an encounter that usually doesn’t end up for them.
Unfortunately, human activities in their territory are pushing them into ever smaller
pockets of native forests.
habitat fragmentation, and diseases from pets have shrunk the kodkod’s habitat and population.
—-- Studies have shown
that they don’t even seem to like planted forests, possibly because they don’t have the hiding spots
and denning sites as older forests. —--
Other predators such as foxes adapt much better to these exotic forests.
—- Kodkods need the undergrowth
of the rainforest to sneak up on prey, and many of their prey do too. Less prey availability and
fewer places to hide lead to fewer kodkods. —--
Fragmentation of their habitats has also led to very low genetic diversity in some populations.
In fact Kodkods have some of the lowest genetic diversity ever recorded in mammals.
Unfortunately their population size is also small.
There are only 10,000 kodkods left in the wild, in about 160,000 km2 of viable habitat.
That means that iIn an area the size of Manhattan, there
would only be about 2 güiñas on average, But in the areas where they’re most abundant,
a male’s territory is about the size of Central Park and females occupy areas
a quarter of that size. And even though there’s so few
of them. They still carry a negative stigma in parts of their range.
Attitudes toward the guiña have historically been negative. In rural areas, especially
in farming communities, these cats have been perceived at best as annoying pests,
and sometimes as dangerous threats. There are also thought by some to be able
to kill goats, although this is very unlikely due to their small size.
To this day, close to 50% of the rural population of southern Chile see this cat as harmful due to
their effects on poultry farms. In some indigenous communities, they’re even seen as bad omens.
In these areas, it’s not uncommon for farmers to kill guiñas and
keep their pelts as trophies.
save the kodkod, like the Guiña working group, who besides doing lots of work in education are also
doing lots of scientific research.
in citizen science projects. Reporting their sightings to collect as much data as possible.
– They also do educational projects to get
people to learn to love the kodkod. Some projects even include life-size sculptures to teach people
what to look for. ====
Additionally, they put up signs on busy roads in the guiñas range,
to alert drivers of the presence of the cat. Road mortality is one of the biggest threats to the
kodkod’s conservation but the signs let people know to be mindful of wildlife on the road.
The younger generations seem to have a more positive attitude towards the cat,
and broader understanding of its role in the ecosystem. This will hopefully
lead to improved and more generalized conservation efforts over time.
The güiña, being a charismatic predator, is slowly becoming an icon of Chilean fauna.
This is helping overcome negative attitudes towards them. Still, for these communities,
protecting poultry continues to be a priority, and local kodkod conservation
efforts need an element of conflict prevention and resolution between cats and farmers.
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