The Weasel on the Toilet Mustela felipei, Colombia

Photo © Juan Manuel de Roux / iNaturalist

In 2011, Juan M. de Roux went into the bathroom — presumably for the usual reasons — and discovered a weasel on top of the toilet. He snapped a few photos, the weasel escaped, and that was that.

Years later he heard about the iNaturalist app, resurrected his pictures, and uploaded them to the site. At first, he assumed the weasel in question was the common long-tailed weasel. But something didn’t feel right. After searching online, he came across a 2014 paper about the extremely rare Colombian weasel, which had the exact same dark chest patch as the weasel in his photos. He corrected the ID on iNaturalist, and then the rest is (scientific) history.

Not only had de Roux re-discovered the Colombian weasel, but he had taken the first-ever photographs of the species.

Little is known about the Colombian weasel. Prior to 2011, the species had been seen in only 5 locations in the mountains of Colombia (and one record from Ecuador) making it one of the rarest carnivores in all of South America. The species was last seen in 1988, despite multiple field studies attempting to find and trap it.

De Roux found the weasel in his parent’s house, which sits across the road from a patch of intact forest adjacent to Colombia’s National Natural Park Farallones de Cali. Conservationists hope that the forest is protecting a healthy population of Colombian weasels. But we might not find out more until the next bathroom break-in.