Forty years ago, Ringerl the olinguito had a problem: Her human matchmakers kept setting her up on bad dates. How bad? They weren't even males of her own species.

That indignity was belatedly righted last year when her species—a raccoon relative unique to the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador—was properly identified at last as Bassaricyon neblina: the first new carnivorous mammal species described in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years

The realization also earned olinguitos a spot on the 2014 Top 10 New Species list, published today by the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry's International Institute for Species Exploration.

This year's list includes a lineup of startling creatures notable for their scrappiness, weirdness,