A trio of white-nosed coatis in a canyon in Arizona. This species is found in a variety of forest habitats, most often near water. There was a pool of water beneath this log.

Here’s a member of the raccoon family that may not be familiar to many people in the eastern US. I knew very little about it before our recent Arizona adventure. A member of the raccoon family, the white-nosed coati (Nasua narica) ranges from the northern edge of South America through most of Central America and Mexico, and up into southern TX, southwestern NM, and much of the southern 2/3 of AZ.

Like its cousin the raccoon, the coati is an opportunistic omnivore. It eats insects, other invertebrates, lizards, snakes, berries, fruits, nuts, and eggs. Also like the raccoon, it has been known to rummage through campsite garbage. That makes me wonder if it will eventually colonize suburbia and avail itself of human food sources. As far as I know, that has not yet happened.

A group of white-nosed coatis rooting around in leaf litter. Two of them are holding their tails almost straight up, a typical position.

The coati has long claws which it uses for digging and climbing, allowing it to access invertebrates in the soil and mast and bird eggs in trees. But its hands are not as sensitive as the raccoons, and it doesn’t use them for probing the way raccoons do. (Read here about raccoon hand sensitivity and foraging behavior.) Instead, the coati uses its long, flexible, sensitive nose to root around in leaf litter and soil, and to probe crevices. So in a sense the coati’s nose is analogous to the raccoon’s hands.

White-nosed coatis often live close to water, and this one is approaching a small pool of water for a sip.

The coati’s social life also differs from the raccoon’s. Female and juvenile coatis travel in “troops” or “bands” of up to 38 individuals. Adult males are solitary except during the mating season.

For the camera trapper, one nice thing about the coati is its preference for foraging in daylight. A white flash is not needed for color images. All of the many trail camera photos I got of this species were captured in daylight.

In some articles the coati is still described as rare or uncommon in the southwestern US. That may or may not be true overall but even if it is, there are definitely pockets of abundance. In the time we spent in AZ (2 trips, total of 2 weeks) we saw one dead coati on a busy street and a live one hurrying down a slope from a dirt road. And as I said I got many trail camera photos of them.

I haven’t been able to find a lot of information on the day to day habits and movement patterns of the white-nosed coati, but they seem to like log walking as much as cats do. Both of my cameras stationed at large logs captured coatis using them. OK, so perhaps n=2 doesn’t mean that much.