Brown-tailed mongoose
The brown-tailed mongoose, brown-tailed vontsira, Malagasy brown-tailed mongoose, or salano ("Salanoia concolor") is a species of mammal in the family Eupleridae. It is endemic to Madagascar. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical dry forests. It is threatened by habitat loss. Taxonomy. The brown-tailed mongoose was first described in 1837 by French zoologist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire under the names "Galidia unicolor" and "Galidia olivacea". He placed both in the genus "Galidia", together with the ring-tailed mongoose ("Galidia elegans"), which is now recognized as the only species of that genus. However, the  name "unicolor" had been a misprint for "concolor", and the name was corrected in an erratum and in a later note by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. In 1865, John Edward Gray placed "concolor" and "olivacea" in their own subgenus of "Galidia", which he called "Salanoia". In 1882, St. George Jackson Mivart also separated "olivacea" and "concolor" from "Galidia", and placed them in a separate genus "Hemigalidia", without mentioning "Salanoia". In his 1904 "Index generum mammalium", Palmer noted that "Salanoia", the first name to be published, was the proper name for the genus. Although Glover Morrill Allen, in 1939, still listed two  species, which he called "Salanoia olivacea" and "S. unicolor", by 1972 R. Albignac recognized a single species only, which he called "Salanoia concolor". A second species of "Salanoia", "Salanoia durrelli", was described in 2010.