Brazilian aardvark
Fake name of the coati
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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]
