Euplerids: Madagascar's Top Mammalian Carnivore

The native mammalian carnivores of Madagascar are mostly obscure to those of us in the West. The one possible exception, thanks to the Madagascar animated film franchise, is the fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox). Often spelt with a single 's', especially in more modern sources, and typically pronounced "foosa", this is the largest and most potentially dangerous of all the island's native mammalian predators.

Having said which, it's not especially big compared with predators elsewhere. There is little need to be a large carnivore when the island does not have, for example, any native antelopes. On average, they are about 75 cm (30 inches) in body length, not counting a cat-like tail that adds about the same length again. Adult females weigh around 6 kg (13 lbs), while the largest males can reach 8.5 kg (19 lbs), about the same as a West Highland terrier. 

Exactly where they fit within the mammalian family tree was long a source of confusion, given a mix of features resembling a range of other animals. When English zoologist Edward Turner Bennett first described the animal in 1833, he considered it to be a type of unusually large civet. So it remained for a hundred until it was moved to the cats in the 1930s, back to the civets in the 1940s, and then to the mongooses in the 1990s. Over the next ten years or so, arguments continued back and forth between all three of these options until genetic studies finally settled the matter in 2003. 

Euplerids: Falanoucs and Fanalokas

Fanaloka

The relationships of the native Madagascan carnivores were uncertain before the advent of genetic testing at the end of the 20th century. The majority were assumed to be mongooses, since that is very much what they looked like, but three species didn't quite fit the pattern. 

Two of these were, so far as anyone could tell from their physical appearance and habits, civets. They were often placed in their own subfamily, reflecting their distance from other civets, but nonetheless, they were thought to belong among the viverrids. Following genetic studies in 2003, however, it became clear that they belonged in the same group as (i.e. shared a unique common ancestor with) the Madagascan "mongooses". Since some of them clearly weren't mongooses, and since they had diverged from the real ones so long ago, the subfamily was split off and promoted to full family level, now including both the mongoose-like and civet-like species.

Euplerids: The Not-Mongooses of Madagascar

Ring-tailed vontsira

There are around 35 currently recognised species of mongoose, spread between Asia and continental Africa. For the most part, they look fairly similar, with most being instantly identifiable as such. For most of the 20th century, however, they were also thought to live on Madagascar. In the last couple of decades, genetic studies have revealed that the Madgascan species, while related to the mongoose family proper, belong in a group of their own. That's partly because they diverged so far back in time, but also because that group includes some animals that manifestly aren't mongooses.

Today, in order to distinguish what we used to call "Madagascan mongooses" from the real sort, we tend to use the local Malagasy word and describe them as "vontsiras".

Strange Carnivores of Madagascar

Madagascar is the fourth-largest island in the world, almost three times the size of Great Britain, or half again the size of California. We should not be surprised, therefore, that it has a considerable amount of native wildlife. However, it's also noteworthy that it has been an island for a very long time - certainly for far longer than Britain has been.

In fact, Madagascar became an island around 91 million years ago, over 20 million years before even the likes of Tyrannosaurus appeared on the scene. Moreover, this was when it split away from what was then the island of India, with its break from Africa being almost twice as far back in time. But, even if we take that younger date for the beginning of its isolation from any sort of 'mainland', it's well before any of the sort of mammals we would recognise today had evolved. There's no equivalent here of mammoths nipping across the English Channel.

Viverrids: The Odd Ones Out

Binturong

Most viverrids have a similar appearance: slender, long-snouted animals, many of them spotted or brown-coated. One, however, stands out as particularly distinctive. This is the binturong (Arctitis binturong) and it's the largest species of "civet", with a total body length ranging from 61 to 96 cm (24 to 38 inches) and weighing between 9 and 20 kg (20 to 44 lbs), similar to small dog such as a Jack Russell or border terrier. Moreover, they appear somewhat larger than they are because, unlike other civets, they have a thick shaggy coat that obscures their actual body.

They are mostly black in colour but with grizzled fur that makes them look grey, and prominent white whiskers. The tail is long and prehensile, and the feet have large, rough pads, giving them an enhanced grip. In other respects, however, they are civet-like, with the same general pattern of teeth and other detailed anatomical features, including a simple perineal scent gland.

Viverrids: Long-tailed Palm Civets (and coffee...)

Common palm civet

While the palm civets do, arguably, form a single group of related animals, they are spread between two subfamilies that diverged at least 23 million years ago, at the dawn of the Miocene epoch. This is only about 5 million years after the split between the true civets and the genets, so it's fair to say that the two subfamilies are distinct. The subfamily that includes the animal originally known in the West as a "palm civet" is that of the paradoxurines.

The animal in question is now known simply as the common palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). The alternative name of "Asian palm civet" is also often seen, although it has the disadvantage of not clearly distinguishing it from all the other palm civets that live in Asia. Which, since there are no palm civets outside of Asia, isn't really narrowing it down much.

Viverrids: Half-Weasel Palm Civets

Banded palm civet

The word "civet", as currently used in English, is a rather broad term, referring to a wide range of vaguely similar-looking animals. Not all of these are even members of the "civet family" as we currently understand it, and even those that are don't form a natural biological group within that family. 

The word was originally Arabic (pronounced something like "zabad") and would have referred to the animals that medieval Arabs were familiar with, which, given how far they traded, would have included both African and South Asian species. These are still regarded as "true civets" today, but the word now also appears in the name of the "palm civets", long thought to be merely a variant of the true sort.

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.

Viverrids: Genets of Northern Africa (and beyond)

Common genet

At the dawn of scientific taxonomy in 1758, the group of animals that would later become the civet family included four species that we still recognise today. Two of these - skunks and mongooses - were later moved elsewhere, and one of the others was, of course, the defining species of the family, the large Indian civet.

The other was the common genet (Genetta genetta). Frédéric Cuvier split the genets off from the civets proper in 1816, recognising just one other species - which molecular evidence has since shown isn't a viverrid at all, although this wasn't obvious even in the late 20th century. His basis for the distinction was that genets have a much smaller scent gland than civets, although he conceded that the secretions it produced were, in his words, "très manifeste". 

Viverrids: Civets Great and Small

Small Indian civet

Most species of true civet weigh somewhere between 7 and 9 kg (16 to 20 lbs), somewhat larger than a domestic cat, and similar to a King Charles spaniel or a Highland terrier - albeit of a more slender shape. The large Indian civet (Viverra zibetha) is at the upper end of this range, the second-largest species of true civet. The name of the large Indian civet, however, tends to imply that there must also be a smaller version in the same general area, and so there is.

The small Indian civet (Viverricula indica) is the smallest of the true civets, between 48 and 68 cm (19 to 27 inches) long, not including the tail, and weighing just 2 to 4 kg (4½ to 9 lbs) - more of a toy poodle or a Pomeranian in terms of dog weight. Otherwise, it looks much like its larger cousin, although it has block spots like a Malay civet, rather than the fainter blotches of its larger namesake, and does not have the crest of erectile hair running down its back. The smaller size caused it to be placed in a separate genus from the other civets as early as 1838, and modern genetic analysis has shown that this is fair; the two parted company about 12 million years ago, while the other Asian civets are much more recent than that.

Viverrids: Civets of Southeast Asia

Large Indian civet

Our definition of the Viverridae family has, as I noted previously, undergone some ups and downs over the centuries. It was first named, in 1821, for the genus Viverra, which, when it was first described, had contained five species. Even by 1821, four of those had been moved elsewhere - and three are no longer even in the family. But, by the rules of scientific naming, unless we scrap the family entirely, Viverra must remain within it. Which leaves one species that, in a sense, defines the family, and against which everything else in it is compared.

That species is the large Indian civet (Viverra zibetha). Thus, even though "viverra" literally means "ferret" in Latin, this means that we can reasonably call the Viverridae "the civet family", as I will be doing from here on in.

Viverrids: Rise and Fall of a Wastebasket

The carnivorous mammals have been recognised as a taxonomic order since the official dawn of biological classification in 1758. In that first publication, Systema Naturae, Carl Linnaeus listed 36 species. The concept of "families" was a later innovation, but Linnaeus used the rank of "genus" much as we would use families today, and, in the case of what we now call the carnivorans, there were six.

These were the cats, dogs, bears, weasels, seals, and a sixth group that he called (in Latin) "ferrets".