A homeowner who was worried after hearing strange noises on the roof of his home at night has shared footage of the surprise culprit.
Victor Flores, from Polanco in Mexico City, told the home-security company Ring: "When I moved here, I started hearing footsteps and movement on my home's roof, which scared me." Eager to investigate, Flores installed several cameras focusing on the area the noise was coming from, and then he waited.
Read more: Compare Top Home Security Cameras
Within a matter of days, Flores had uncovered the unexpected source of the disruption. "To my relief, I discovered it was just the cacomistles [a slender, long-tailed, raccoonlike carnivore] playing on the roof and getting up to mischief," Flores said. However, while the animal in the clip might have appeared cute and cuddly, the sighting was a little more special than Flores might have initially realized.
A small mammal belonging to the Procyonidae family, the cacomistle is a close cousin of the raccoon. They are much smaller, though, and slender, weighing an average of just 2 to 3 pounds.
A grayish brown in color with some lighter underparts and white patches over their eyes, cacomistles range from 24 to 40 inches in length, though much of that is their distinctive bushy, black-and-white-ringed tail, which helps them to maintain their balance.
Also known as ring-tailed cats, cacomistles have small faces with long ears and noticeably pointed snouts and tend to feed on a mix of small animals, fruit and vegetables.
Though cacomistles definitely share more than a passing resemblance to raccoons, these little furry intruders are incredibly talented when it comes to hiding, making sightings of it extremely rare.
These nocturnal animals were previously confined to forested areas around the city, but have now spread throughout urban areas, drawn by the increasing number of restaurants and waste.
Flores' video nevertheless represents a rare instance of them being caught on camera. Though cacomistles are sometimes captured for their fur, the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species classifies the cacomistle as "Least Concern" in terms of population numbers.
This isn't the first time something extraordinary from the world of nature has been captured on a Ring security camera.
In November 2022, a Nevada homeowner shared shocking footage of the moment when a giant bear decided to go for a well-earned dip in his garden pond.
A year later, one woman In Arizona was left terrified after her doorbell camera captured the unsettling moment a giant spider began crawling the walls of her front porch.
Another clip, filmed in December 2022, meanwhile, showed a rare instance of an moose shedding both antlers at once.
Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@newsweek.com with some details about your best friend, and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.
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