The ring-tailed roonga

Despite appearances, this is not an actual animal, living or extinct. It's actually based on Ringy Roonga, the Looney Tunes character you've never heard of.

I discovered the character sometime last year when I first found scans of old Looney Tunes comics online. The earliest issues are rather odd, because, aside from the crude Bugs and Porky stories, in the back of each issue were characters I've never heard of before such as Chester Turtle, Charlie Carrot, and Kandi the Cave Kid, no doubt produced by Dell artists as filler material.
But strangest of all was Ringy Roonga. I've just written a blog entry about him, detailing his fascinating history: [link]

I was also intrigued by the idea that so early in popular culture somebody had made up a fictional animal that, in contrast to most at the time, was living here on Earth in a real place, and was actually rather mundane, as far as animals go.
Inspired, I took Ringy's species and invisioned it as an actual animal, mostly based on the family Vivveridae (civets, genets, and the binturong a.k.a. bearcat), with a little Procyonidae thrown in (raccoons, coatis, the ringtail).
Originally I had planned to have him in an African tree of some sort, but after finding out that Ringy's place of origin wasn't consistent, I just changed it to "cool-looking tree of indeterminate species". I call it a Burmbleberry.

Overall, it's meant to evoke a scientific illustration.

~Criswell