[icarus]

The article quotes a scientist who thinks it might be a viverrid, which would mean it's like a civet.

Red pandas are goofy. They are probably mephetids or mustelids, although no one really knows. They could warrant their own family. They are no more closely related to raccoons (procyonids) as they are to giant pandas (ursids).

I wanted to be a cryptozoologist throughout my youth. Then in the course of my zoology degree I realised that finding a real cryptozoologist is about as likely as finding Bigfoot. No respectible research body would fund a cryptozoology expedition (not counting The Learning Channel and the like), nor would a scientific journal publish an article on 'cryptozoology' as such. Either you're a zoologist or not; you would get laughed at in scientific circles if you claimed to be a cryptozoologist. The Bigfoot and Nessie hunters are self-proclaimed cryptozoologists. Scientists like the ones in the article probably just consider themselves mammalogists or, more generally, zoologists.