Asian palm civet

Name and taxonomy

Peter Simon Pallas named the species Viverra hermaphrodita in 1777. The species name refers to the perineal scent gland under the tail, which both sexes carry and which resembles testicles. The type locality is uncertain, and Pallas wrote only that the animal came from the Barbary coast, which is clearly wrong. The genus Paradoxurus holds the palm civets, and the family Viverridae holds civets and genets.

More than thirty subspecies have been described, from Bengal, Sumatra, Java, Kashmir, Bali and many small islands. Their status has never been properly reviewed, and a revision is needed. A genetic study in 2015 raised the Philippine form, P. philippinensis, to a full species. The Mentawai palm civet, P. lignicolor, is sometimes treated as a separate species and is listed as Vulnerable. iNaturalist now files the mainland animal as the Northern palm civet after this split.

Evolution and relatives

Civets belong to the order Carnivora, but the Asian palm civet has turned largely to fruit. Its teeth are weaker and more pointed than those of meat-eating civets, and the slicing carnassials are less developed. It walks on the whole sole of the foot, in the way that bears and raccoons do. The claws are semi-retractile, the soles are naked, and the third and fourth toes are partly fused.

Palm civets on Palawan are genetically close to those on Borneo. The Palawan animals probably crossed from Borneo during the Pleistocene, when sea levels were lower. People may then have carried civets to other Philippine islands. Scattered records from Sulawesi, the Moluccas, Timor and the Aru Islands are also thought to come from introductions.

Appearance

The coat is coarse and shaggy, grey to greyish brown or rusty, with black-tipped guard hairs. Three rows of black spots run along each side of the body, and dark stripes run down the back. The face carries a white mask across the forehead, a white patch under each eye and a white spot beside each nostril. The muzzle, ears, lower legs and the outer half of the tail are black. Unlike most civets, its tail has no rings, and its neck hair grows backwards.

The head and body measure 43 to 71 centimetres, and the tail is about 48 centimetres long. Adults weigh 2 to 5 kilograms, and island animals, notably on Borneo, are smaller. The eyes are large and dark, the ears large and pointed, and the skull is longer and flatter than a cat's. Young animals show the spots and stripes less clearly. Males and females look alike, and both carry the scent gland under the tail.

Habitat and range

The species lives from India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It also occurs in southern China, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Borneo, Sumatra, Java and the Philippines. It was introduced to Sulawesi, Maluku, the Lesser Sunda Islands and Irian Jaya, and to Japan in the late 1800s. Its presence in Papua New Guinea is uncertain. GBIF holds occurrence records from 26 countries, a figure that includes zoos and escapes.

It prefers primary forest but survives at lower density in secondary and selectively logged forest. It also lives in plantations, orchards, parks, suburban gardens and around villages. It has been found up to 2,400 metres above sea level. In Thailand a radio-collared male used dry dipterocarp, mixed deciduous and dry evergreen forest.

The civet chooses its home by food and by places to rest, such as tree hollows, rock crevices and dense foliage. It favours the tallest trees with the thickest canopy and vines, which hide it from predators. On Borneo, civet density in logged forest was clearly lower than in primary forest.

Diet and feeding

The Asian palm civet is an omnivore that eats fruit first and everything else second. It prefers berries and pulpy fruit, and it picks the ripest fruit and leaves the rest for later. Favourites include figs, chiku, mango, banana, rambutan and papaya. Civets on Java are said to feed from more than 35 kinds of tree, shrub and creeper. It also drinks the sweet sap of the sugar palm, which people ferment into toddy, hence the name toddy cat.

In Nepal, 193 droppings contained 85% fruit, along with insects, snails, small reptiles, birds and small mammals. On Borneo, stomachs held 90% arthropods and 45% fruit and leaves, with no trace of vertebrates. When ripe fruit runs out, the diet shifts to small vertebrates. It takes rats, mice, shrews, birds, eggs, worms, scorpions and snails.

It forages from tree to tree, and it also digs in the ground for worms. Like a cat, it stalks small prey from a hiding place and then pounces. Home ranges shrink in February and June, when wild coffee and curry-leaf fruit are plentiful.

Behaviour and social life

The civet is nocturnal, arboreal and mostly solitary. It is active from dusk to dawn, with a peak between late evening and after midnight. In Thailand, radio-collared animals were active more than 50% of the time between late afternoon and early morning. It moves less on bright moonlit nights, and in Nepal no tracked animal left its rest site under a full moon.

By day it curls up inside a hollow trunk, a crack in the rock or a tangle of vines. When food is steady it returns to the same tree every day. It breaks up the night with short rests, grooming, stretching and clawing. Its night-time habits are thought to have evolved to avoid predators that hunt by day.

Home ranges in Nepal ran from about 1.4 to 17 square kilometres, and ranges of neighbours overlap widely. Males use much larger ranges than females, about 17 square kilometres against 2. During a night it covers several hundred metres, with a mean of 215 metres. It climbs well, gripping with its claws and strong hind feet, but its tail cannot grasp, so it walks between trees rather than leaping.

Communication and senses

Scent is the civet's main language. Both sexes drag the perineal gland along a branch or the ground to leave a mark. They also rub the ear and neck region and the heels, and they mark with urine and faeces. Males mark far more often than females, probably because they are more territorial. The gland scent lasts longer than any other, and it works as a long-term notice board.

From the smell of the gland secretion a civet can tell the species, the sex and whether it knows the animal. Civets are usually silent, but they can give a meow-like call. When alarmed or handled they snarl, hiss and spit. When threatened, the anal glands release a foul secretion as a chemical defence. Like other night animals, it probably relies on its large eyes and its nose more than on sound.

Reproduction and life cycle

Because the civet is nocturnal and secretive, most of what is known about mating comes from zoos. It breeds all year, though young are seen most often between October and December. The oestrous cycle averages about 82 days, and a female may have up to two litters a year. A pair shares a resting tree and mates repeatedly over one to fifteen days. One wild pair watched in March 2010 mated on a branch for about five minutes, and the male mounted four or five times.

Gestation lasts about 60 days, or 61 to 63 days in captivity. The female gives birth in a hollow tree or a boulder crevice. A litter holds 2 to 5 kittens, each about 80 grams at birth, furred but blind. The eyes open at about 11 days, and the kittens are weaned at two months. They are full grown at about three months and sexually mature at 11 to 12 months.

The kittens stay in the hollow until weaning, so little is known about parental care. The mother is thought to raise them alone. Wild civets live 15 to 20 years, and one captive animal reached 24.5 years.

Predators and threats

Tigers and leopards are the main predators, along with large snakes and crocodiles. The civet's night habits and its tree-top rest sites are thought to have evolved as a defence against them. Its foul gland secretion is a last defence when it is cornered.

People are a greater threat than any predator. Hunters and trappers take civets in southern China, and some tribes in India eat the meat. In Indonesia, poachers supply the pet trade and the kopi luwak farms. Plantation owners kill civets that raid their fruit. Logging and clearing for oil palm shrink its forest, though it survives in disturbed habitat.

Population and conservation

The IUCN has listed the species as Least Concern since 2008. It has a wide range, a large population and a stable trend, and it copes with many habitats. No global count exists, and the 2008 assessment judged the population unlikely to be falling. The Mentawai subspecies is listed as Vulnerable, and China's red list calls the species vulnerable from over-hunting.

The species is on CITES Appendix III, listed by India. India protects it under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, and Malaysia and Sichuan also protect it by law. Indonesia sets a quota and allows only 10% of civets taken from the wild to be sold at home. Traders largely ignore the quota, and the authorities do not enforce it. Civets have become popular pets in Indonesia, and most of those in the markets of Java and Bali come from the wild.

Relationship with humans

The civet is best known for kopi luwak, a coffee made from beans it has eaten and passed. The animal picks only the ripest cherries, and the gut gives the beans a strong flavour. Kopi luwak sells for more than one hundred dollars a pound, which makes it the dearest coffee in the world. Demand has led to farms where civets sit in battery cages, a practice criticised on welfare grounds.

For centuries people scraped the scent gland for musk, once a scabies cure and now a perfume base. The scraping is difficult and painful for the animal if done badly. In India, oil from small pieces of civet meat kept in linseed oil is still used as a folk cure for scabies. Villagers also keep civets to catch rats and mice.

Civets raid orchards and plantations, and growers kill them in return. Animals that move into a roof or a barn make noise all night and are treated as a nuisance. In India the civet has picked up unkind local names, such as gravedigger in Delhi and onion thief in Maharashtra.

In culture and myth

In the mythology of the Bagobo people of the Philippines, Lakivot was a huge palm civet that could talk. Lakivot slew Ogassi, a monster with one eye, and then the busaw spirits guarding the Tree of Gold. He won the Flower of Gold, took the shape of a handsome youth and wed the woman who received it. The Philippine twenty-peso note now shows the civet on its reverse side.

In Chinese tradition, an opera tells of a civet cat swapped for a newborn prince, and the civet became a symbol of tricks and disguise. That story is about the masked palm civet, another species, but people often confuse the two. In Kolkata the civet is the bhaam, or baby stealer, a name born of fear rather than fact. Spirit-animal websites call the civet a sign of luck, stealth and resilience, but these claims are probably modern inventions.