Viverrids: Genets of Central and Southern Africa

Rusty-spotted genet

The genets are one of the most speciose of the carnivoran genera, with at least fourteen species living across Africa and, in the case of the common genet, just beyond it. However, the majority of the species have been little studied. As small, nocturnal carnivores often dwelling in hard-to-reach places, it is relatively hard to do so, and they lack the cachet that applies to larger, more glamorous animals such as cheetahs, hyenas, or even wild cats. 

It probably doesn't help that there is not a great visual or (so far as we know) behavioural difference between them. In many cases, the easiest way to tell them apart is simply to note where they were found. There are subtle differences between them, to be sure, but you may have to look quite closely, and the variations are often matters of degree. Nonetheless, let's see what I can say as I take a look at the seven confirmed species that I didn't cover in the last one.

Despite this, one species besides the common genet is very widely distributed, living across pretty much the whole of central and southern Africa. This is the rusty-spotted genet (Genetta fieldiana), which is also known by variations on the theme of "large-spotted genet" and, more rarely, as the "leopard genet". There is also confusion over the correct scientific name. In 1855, French zoologist Jacques Pucheran had named it G. rubiginosa, and, that was the one used for many decades.

Then, in 1981, a problem was discovered with this name. This is because when a species is named, you have to point to a particular specimen (ideally held in a museum or the like) and say "one of those - that's what I'm talking about". This is helpful if, later on, somebody splits the species into two; the one your specimen belongs to is the "real" one, and it's the other that gets the new name. This is exactly what happened in this case, so when it was proposed to split the species into the larger number that we have today, scientists went back to look at Pucheran's specimen to check which of their "new" species it belonged to.

At which point, they discovered that it was, in fact, a Hausa genet, a species that was already known and clearly identified as something separate. Well, you can't define a species by pointing to something entirely different, so they had to find the first time somebody had given a name to an actual member of the species. Which turned out to be G. maculata, coined by Charles Gray in 1830, although he had a different definition, which was why it hadn't stuck previously. But, as the best option available, we used that for the next quarter of a century, and it's still common in reference sources today. 

Except that it doesn't work, either, because Gray had accidentally reused a name already given to an entirely different animal (a marsupial, of all things) by somebody else in 1792. After this was pointed out, and following a full six years of arguing, the name was officially scrapped, and the current one was applied in its place.

Whatever we want to call it, the rusty-spotted genet lives across a wide swathe of sub-Saharan Africa, reaching Eritrea in the northeast, Ghana and Burkina Faso in the northwest, and Nambia and eastern South Africa in the south. It primarily lives in forests and savannah, as one might expect given that range, and seemingly prefers open woodland with plenty of available water. They can be found at high altitude, for example on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. In fact, it's quite happy in oil palm and pineapple plantations, and even in the suburbs, making it better known than its warier kin.

It's a medium-sized, slender, genet with a rather variable coat colour. While the name would suggest that its spots are rusty colour, and that's often true, they can also be much darker. They are typically larger than in many other species, varying in shape from oblong to rounded, and even here, there is variation. Some rare individuals are pure black, in a similar manner to "black panthers" just being all-black forms of leopards and jaguars. 

Rodents are, perhaps unsurprisingly, their favourite food, with some studies failing to find any scats of the animal that don't contain rodent remains, even if many of them do contain other animals such as beetles and grasshoppers. Most of the rodents are mice, although the details will naturally vary across the wide range of their occurrence. For example, a Nigerian study showed Tullberg's soft-furred mouse as the single most common prey of the genet, and they only live along the coast of West Africa, so clearly they aren't part of the diet in, say, Ethiopia or Mozambique.

Like other genets, they are solitary outside the breeding season, wandering across regions of no more than 10 km² and marking their territory with dung piles and the scent from their anal glands. During the day, they sleep in patches of dense trees or bushes, and they tend to avoid the most open terrain when travelling at night. Although they often hunt on the ground, they can also climb trees to hunt among the branches, sometimes taking birds or bats. They stalk their prey, as cats do, pouncing on it once they are close enough, and dispatching it with a single bite. 

The timing of the mating season varies significantly across their range, although it tends to be in the winter in southern Africa. The female initially avoids the male, running away from him until he can demonstrate his persistance, after which they lick and sniff each other and rub their cheeks before mating. This has been described as lasting about five minutes and is often accompanied by "meow" sounds. A litter of up to five young are born 70 to 77 days later, already furred, but with wider blotches than the adults, and, like cats, they are initially blind.

The servaline genet (Genetta servalina) lives in central Africa, from the Sanaga River in Cameroon to just south of the mouth of the Congo on the Atlantic coast across to Uganda and central Kenya in the east. Isolated populations were discovered in various mountainous regions of Tanzania in 2006 and 2012, and on the island of Zanzibar in 1998, so it's possible that there may be others beyond the regular range that have yet to be discovered.

Crested genet

They prefer forested areas, but is otherwise quite adaptable, being found in dense jungles, woodland savannah, and high-altitude bamboo forests. The stripe along the back is broken into long dashes, rather than being continuous, and the dark spots get progressively smaller as they approach the animal's underside.

In 1940, a subspecies of servaline genet was described living to the north of the Sanaga River. It has since been genetically confirmed as a separate species, and is now known as the crested genet (Genetta cristata). As often happens, since the two species were separated, notable differences have come to light. For one, the crested genet prefers drier woodlands, typically deciduous, rather than tropical evergreen, and they are found only in lowlands. This is likely reflected in the details of their diet, which overlaps more with the rusty-spotted species than with its close relative. 

There are also physical differences. As indicated by their name, crested genets have a crest of fur down the middle of the back, which servaline genets do not, and the spots are typically larger. They are now thought to live further to the west than they were when initially described, occupying both the northern coast of Cameroon and much of southern Nigeria. A combination of habitat loss and a presumed small population mean that it is one of just two genet species (along with Bourlon's genet from Liberia and Sierra Leone) to be listed as "vulnerable" or "threatened", the category short of being truly endangered.

Moving further south, we come to the Miombo genet (Genetta angolensis), which lives from Angola to Malawi and Mozambique. The spots on the upper back merge into streaks, and fully black individuals are quite common in comparison with other species. The name comes from the miombo woodland that it inhabits - a type of savannah dominated by Brachystegia, tropical trees in the legume family related to the tamarinds of India. 

Cape genet

The cape genet (Genetta tigrina) lives along the southern coast of South Africa, from Durban to just north of Cape Town. It physically resembles the rusty-spotted genet, and is therefore sometimes called the "South African large-spotted genet". Unlike that animal, however, it has a more consistent coat, with a pale greyish background and large spots with brownish centres and a darker outline. The stripe along the midline of the back is continuous, as it is in that (and most other) species, but includes a short crest of vertical hair. 

It lives in the fynbos, a belt of scrubby heathland vegetation similar to that of the Mediterranean or coastal California. It tends to live near water, and to hunt in areas where bushes provide cover as well, presumably, as sleeping areas. They are tolerant of human activity, often venturing into suburban areas, where they snooze on building roofs, out of reach of dogs. This tolerance may be in part because the locals in that part of the world don't hunt the genets, and sometimes leave pet food out to encourage them to visit. Their natural diet consists of a mixture of rodents and shrews, along with beetles and grasshoppers, and an unusually high proportion of grassy vegetable matter. Their favoured rodent prey are climbing mice and, to a lesser extent, vlei rats.

The giant genet (Genetta victoriae) is the largest of the species, although perhaps not by as much as its name might suggest. It measures up to 61 cm (2 feet) in length, rather than 50 cm (1'8"), and weighs 3 kg (5 lbs 10 oz.) rather than 2.5 kg (5 lbs 8 oz.). Otherwise, it has large, irregular spots and a short crest down the middle of the back; the central stripe is discontinuous, but the darker hairs are so long that  this isn't always obvious.

It lives in some of the densest parts of the Congo jungle, in the northern DRC and some neighbouring parts of Uganda and Rwanda. One could reasonably assume that it eats larger prey than other genets, with perhaps more rats than mice, but studies on its diet simply don't exist.

The most distinctive of all genets, however, is the aquatic genet (Genetta piscivora), which lives in much the same area as the giant species. So much so, in fact, that it was long placed in a different genus, before genetic data confirmed that, despite appearances, it is just a regular genet.

Aquatic genet

The most obvious difference is that, unlike every other genet, it has no spots at all, just a rich reddish brown coat, albeit with distinctive black and white markings on the face. Furthermore, it has teeth that are smaller than usual and bare palms on its forefeet. Both of these features are thought to be adaptations to catching fish, since the locals say it eats little else, and a dead one whose stomach contents were examined turned out to have recently eaten a catfish.

This fits with the fact that they are observed almost exclusively along waterways - although, in fairness, it might be hard to spot them elsewhere in the depths of the jungle. One observed briefly in captivity wandered along the edges of a pool, stabbing its paw vertically into the water and then lunging to grab fish with a single bite. It would also eat frogs and some aquatic insects, although it isn't clear how much of its diet these normally comprise, and it completely ignored the grasshoppers that any other genet would be happy to feed on. (It's said to feed on crustaceans too, but has never been observed doing so, and doesn't appear to have the relevant adaptations - but, given how few observations there are, you never know).

While the exact number of species has varied down the years, the animals listed in this and the previous post were long considered to be the only kinds of genet. However, genetic studies confirmed that there was one other species of animal that, if not strictly speaking a genet, was closely related to them, and now belongs in the same subfamily. Previously called the "African linsang", this means it is not a close relative of the real (Asian) linsangs, and deserves a name more appropriate to its African origins. Furthermore, in 2005, following some earlier suggestions, the two subspecies were raised to full species status.

West African oyan

Thus, we now have the Central African oyan (Poiana richardsonii) and the West African oyan (Poiana leightoni). The two do look much like regular genets, but their spots are more irregularly placed than in most true genet species, and they typically (but not always) lack the black stripe down the middle of the back. They are smaller, and much more slender, at around 35 cm (14 inches) in length and 600g (21 oz.) in weight, with the West African species being slightly shorter and lighter than the other. 

The Central African species lives in much the same area as the servaline genet. Along the Atlantic coast, it is found from Cameroon to the mouth of the Congo, from which it stretches eastward to the Great Rift Valley, along the eastern border of the DRC and into western Rwanda and Uganda. The much rarer West African species lives some distance away, in eastern Liberia and the neighbouring parts of Côte d'Ivoire. Both of these places are heavily forested, and the oyans are thought to spend far more time in the trees than true genets.

The few reports of their activity indicate that they are, like genets, nocturnal, and that they sleep in trees during the day, with one West African individual reported to have built a nest about 2 metres (6 feet) above the ground. They are thought to eat birds, insects, and tree-climbing rodents, but we really don't have any studies to go into more detail than that. Which, beyond the fact that a lactating female of the the Central African species was once spotted in October, giving at least some vague hint as to when they might give birth, is pretty much the extent of our knowledge.

The genets and oyans taken together form a subfamily within the viverrids, alongside that containing the true civets. There are, however, four subfamilies in total, with both of the others going by the collective name of "palm civets". Next time, I will be taking a look at one of those subfamilies.

[Pictures by Bernard Dupont, Donovan Rosevear, and Justin Ponder, from Wikimedia Commons, and Richard Deckert and St George Mivart, in the public domain. Cladogram adapted from Gaubert et al. 2006.]