Coati social structure splits by sex. Females and immature animals of both sexes travel in bands that can number a dozen to several dozen, foraging together with constant contact calls. Adult males leave these bands and live alone for most of the year, rejoining briefly to breed. To an observer meeting one lone male in the forest and a band elsewhere, these look like two kinds of animal.
That is precisely the conclusion early naturalists drew, and the solitary form was given its own name. Coatimundi, from a Tupian term, came to be applied to the supposed separate species. The mistake was corrected, but the word persists in common usage for coatis generally.
The snout is the animal's working tool: long, flexible, projecting past the lower jaw and rotatable through a wide arc, it is pushed into leaf litter and rotten wood to find invertebrates. Coatis also rank among the more capable climbers in their family, descending trunks head-first using reversible ankles. Band sizes reported in the literature vary widely between sites and seasons, so any single figure quoted for band size should be treated as local rather than typical.