Brazilian aardvark

In July 2008, Dylan Breves, a seventeen-year-old student from New York City, edited the Wikipedia article on the coati, adding the false nickname "Brazilian aardvark," which he had invented as a private joke. Breves and his brother had encountered coatis during a trip to Iguaçu Falls in Brazil, where they mistakenly believed the animals were aardvarks.[1] The false information remained on Wikipedia for six years and was propagated by hundreds of websites, several newspapers, books published by university presses, and academic books on natural history.[2][3]

Origins

On 12 July 2008, Dylan Breves, a seventeen-year-old student from New York City,[3] made an edit to the Wikipedia article on the coati. He added that the coati was also known as a "Brazilian aardvark," a nickname he had invented as a private joke. Breves and his brother had encountered coatis during a trip to Iguaçu Falls in Brazil, where they mistakenly believed the animals were aardvarks.[1] When Breves made the edit, he assumed that someone would notice the lack of citations and flag it for removal.

Impact

About a year later, he searched online for the phrase "Brazilian aardvark" and found that not only was his edit still on Wikipedia, but it had also been propagated by hundreds of other websites about coatis. References to the nickname later appeared in The Independent,[4] the Daily Express,[5] the Daily Mail,[1] the Metro,[6] a book published by the University of Chicago,[1] and a scholarly work published by the University of Cambridge.[7] No mentions of the phrase existed online before his edit in July 2008.

Discovery and aftermath

Shortly after its addition, the false nickname was propagated by numerous sources. After The New Yorker published an article in May 2014 on the subject, the nickname was removed from Wikipedia following its publication.[1][2]

Taxonomically, the coati is not related to the aardvark.[1] The coati belongs to the family Procyonidae,[8] while the aardvark belongs to the family Orycteropodidae.[9] Additionally, the two species inhabit different regions: aardvarks are native to sub-Saharan Africa,[10] whereas coatis are found in North and South America.[11]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Randall, Eric (19 May 2014). "How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark". The New Yorker. Retrieved 7 September 2025.
  2. ^ a b Kolbe, Andreas (16 January 2017). "Happy birthday: Jimbo Wales' sweet 16 Wikipedia fails". The Register. Retrieved 7 September 2025.
  3. ^ a b "On Brazilian Aardvarks, Wikipedia, And Digital Populism". Stanford University Press. 22 May 2014. Retrieved 7 September 2025.
  4. ^ Brown, Jonathan (21 June 2010). "From wallabies to chipmunks, the exotic creatures thriving in the UK". The Independent. Archived from the original on 21 May 2014. Coati (also known as the Brazilian aardvark): found in Cumbria
  5. ^ Ingham, John (21 June 2010). "Exotic animals could wipe out native wildlife". Daily Express. Retrieved 5 July 2019. There are also about 10 Brazilian aardvark in Cumbria
  6. ^ "Scorpions, wallabies and aadvarks 'invading Britain'". Metro. 21 June 2010. Archived from the original on 25 June 2010. Retrieved 5 July 2019. There are thought to be ten coatis, a kind of Brazilian aardvark, in Cumbria
  7. ^ Safier, Neil (2014). "Beyond Brazilian Nature: The Editorial Itineraries of Marcgraf and Piso's Historia Naturalis Brasiliae". In Groesen, Michiel van (ed.). The Legacy of Dutch Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 179. ISBN 978-1-107-06117-0. In the case of the Coati, for instance, also known as the Brazilian aardvark, Buffon explained that "Marcgrave, and practically all of the Naturalists after him, said that the aardvark had six toes in its hind feet: M. Brisson is the only one who has not copied this error of Marcgrave."
  8. ^ "Coati". San Diego Zoo. Retrieved 6 November 2021.
  9. ^ Schlitter, D.A. (2005). "Order Tubulidentata". In Wilson, D.E.; Reeder, D.M (eds.). Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC 62265494.
  10. ^ African Wildlife Foundation (2013). "Aardvark". African Wildlife Foundation. Archived from the original on 5 January 2008. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
  11. ^ Beisiegel, B. M. (2001). "Notes on the coati, Nasua nasua (Carnivora: Procyonidae) in an Atlantic Forest area". Brazilian Journal of Biology. 61 (4): 689–692. doi:10.1590/S1519-69842001000400020. ISSN 1519-6984. PMID 12071327.
  • Original edit
  • The dictionary definition of Brazilian aardvark at Wiktionary
  • Media related to Coati at Wikimedia Commons
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