“Sort of as a joke, I slipped in the ‘also known as the Brazilian aardvark’ [at the Wikipedia entry of the coati] and then forgot about it for awhile.”
When Breves made the change, he assumed that someone would catch the lack of citation and flag his edit for removal.
Over time, though, something strange happened: the nickname caught on.
Classic case of Citogenesis. Also: too bad the “Wikipedia is accurate (citation needed)” t-shirt from BustedTees (pictured below) is not available any more. Thankfully I ordered mine before it got yanked 🙂
How a Racoon became an Aardvark →
Somewhat related: At a certain point in time this post here on bram.us was the source confirming the fact that the cigarette lighter was invented before the match, even though I got my answer from Wikipedia + another source (don’t remember which one) myself.