Mammals of the Caribbean "Cubacyon transversidens" and "Indocyon caribensis". The small Asian mongoose ("Herpestes auropunctatus") has been widely introduced in the Caribbean from the 1870s onwards; it is known from Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, Gonâve, Puerto Rico, Vieques, Saint Thomas, Saint John, Water Island, Lovango Cay, Tortola, Beef Island, Jost van Dyke, Saint Croix, Saint Martin, Saint Kitts, Nevis, Antigua, Guadeloupe, La Désirade, Marie Galante, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Carriacou, Grenada, Barbados, and Trinidad. Artiodactyls include deer, antelope, cattle, pigs, camels, and related species, as well as whales and dolphins. A small form of the collared peccary ("Pecari tajacu") is known from Cozumel. The
Mammals of the Caribbean connecting South America with one or more off-shelf islands). Colonization of a series of islands can occur either by an iterative rafting process ("island-hopping"), or by colonization of a large ancestral island which is then subdivided by into smaller islands by subsequent geologic or sea level changes (island-island vicariance). The restricted, unbalanced nature of the Caribbean mammal fauna implies that rafting was part of the overall process. This is consistent with the fact that megalonychid sloths, platyrrhine monkeys and caviomorph rodents have all shown a capacity for this type of dispersal (in their colonization of North America from South America