Isothrix barbarabrownae is a recently discovered species of rodent

Rodent

Rodentia is an order of mammals also known as rodents, characterised by two continuously growing incisors in the upper and lower jaws which must be kept short by gnawing....

 most closely related to the spiny rat

Spiny rat

The spiny rats are a group of hystricognath rodents in the family Echimyidae. They are distributed from central Central America through much of South America. They were also found in the West Indies until the 19th century...

. It was discovered in Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, and is about the same size as a large squirrel, such as a Eurasian red squirrel. It inhabits the Peruvian cloud forest

Cloud forest

A cloud forest, also called a fog forest, is a generally tropical or subtropical evergreen montane moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud cover, usually at the canopy level. Cloud forests often exhibit an abundance of mosses covering the ground and...

, where it forages for fruit and nuts. It is a nocturnal, climbing rodent which was collected by scientists in 1999, and formally described

Alpha taxonomy

Alpha taxonomy is the discipline concerned with finding, describing and naming species of living or fossil organisms. This field is supported by institutions holding collections of these organisms, with relevant data, carefully curated: such institutes include natural history museums, herbaria and...

in 2006. It is brown, with a black-and-white tail.