Colombian weasel

The Colombian weasel, Neogale felipei, also called Don Felipe's weasel, is a very rare New World weasel known with certainty only from parts of Colombia and Ecuador. As of 2023 it had been recorded 11 times in the Colombian departments of Huila and Cauca and once in northern Ecuador. Both its scientific name and its alternative common name honour Philip Hershkovitz, an American mammalogist. It appears largely restricted to riparian habitats at 1,100 to 2,700 metres in the northern Andes, where deforestation is extensive, and with fewer than twelve known specimens it is probably the rarest carnivoran in South America. It is the second-smallest living carnivoran on average, slightly larger than the least weasel and slightly smaller than the stoat, with blackish-brown upperparts and tail and orange-buff underparts. The first photograph of a living individual was taken in 2011 by an amateur naturalist who found one trapped in his parents' house, and the image gained wide attention after it was uploaded to iNaturalist in 2018. The IUCN considers it vulnerable.