The two rather large civet cats were crunching up chicken bones, leftovers of the forest guards' dinner that had been thrown into the elephant trench surrounding the building. To us, the animals seemed much bigger than the common Small Indian Civet, and every now and then, they stood on their hind legs to get a better perspective of our invasive lights. We all had the same thought: Malabar Civet! We made no move to get a camera for fear that they would run away. Instead, we tried to memorise the civet cats' features in the dark.
Almost six decades earlier, Angus Hutton, a tea planter in the adjoining High Wavy Mountains tea estate, had recorded that the Malabar Civet was ‘very common', but there is a strong suspicion that he had misidentified the Small Indian Civet. By 1939, it was feared that the Malabar Civet was becoming rare and close to extinction. Excitedly we wrote in the register that we had seen a pair of Malabar Civets, the most elusive Indian mammal.
But Ajith Kumar of Centre for Wildlife Studies (whose logo is a Malabar Civet) doubted that we had seen it. He suggested that the little civet is so widespread across so many different habitats, altitudes and latitudes that there was tremendous variation in features, pattern and size.
One biologist asked if the civets we had seen had a mane, but we hadn't noticed. Three stripes along the throat? We thought we saw something like that. Another asked if we noticed whether the bands completely encircled the tail. Don't know, it was too dark. Did they have black tail tips? Huh? Unfortunately, we hadn't known these were the features to look for.
Last week, R. Nandini and Divya Mudappa, two experts on small mammals, published an account of their investigations on the Malabar Civet. They examined six skins and three skulls held in various museums in the U.K. and India, and pored over everything ever written by wildlife experts 1800s onwards.
The Malabar Civet was reportedly found in the lowland coastal forests of the Western Ghats from Karwar (northern Karnataka) to Trivandrum.
There had been a few sightings far inland in Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary, Tirunelveli, and in the hills of the High Wavys. But, most of the sightings were around Kozhikode. No other civet cat in Asia is so narrowly restricted in range.
Nandini and Divya agreed with the possibility that the Malabar Civet may have become extremely rare from being hunted for its famous musk. But, could they really be so finicky that they couldn't tolerate the conversion of their forests to plantations when other civets thrived?
There was no real clarity on what a Malabar Civet looks like, the origin of the museum specimens were obscure, and their identity uncertain as mammalogists contradicted each other. To confuse matters further, the Large-spotted Civet of Southeast Asia and the Malabar Civet look almost identical. This suggested an alternate conclusion that is truly revolutionary: the Malabar Civet may never have existed!
Over millennia, civet cats were traded among Ethiopia, Southeast Asia and India for civetone, a secretion of the anal musk glands used in traditional medicine, perfumery and as a religious offering.
Even today, Small Indian Civets are maintained on farms in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, for the extraction of musk. Kozhikode, the centre of most recent Malabar Civet sightings, was a well-known trading port since ancient times. Nandini and Divya wondered if there was a possibility that Large-spotted Civets brought from Southeast Asia escaped from captivity, leading to occasional sightings in the wild.
This is not so farfetched, as captive Small Indian Civets have escaped and established themselves in countries such as Madagascar, Philippines, and other islands of Southeast Asia.
So, it is distinctly possible that the Malabar Civet may actually be nothing more unique than the Large-spotted Civet.
Genetic analysis will go one step further in answering the question: do Malabar Civets exist?
http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/metroplus/article958890.ece
Showing posts with label civet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civet. Show all posts
Sunday, December 19, 2010
The case of the mythical Malabar Civet
The two rather large civet cats were crunching up chicken bones, leftovers of the forest guards' dinner that had been thrown into the elephant trench surrounding the building. To us, the animals seemed much bigger than the common Small Indian Civet, and every now and then, they stood on their hind legs to get a better perspective of our invasive lights. We all had the same thought: Malabar Civet! We made no move to get a camera for fear that they would run away. Instead, we tried to memorise the civet cats' features in the dark.
Almost six decades earlier, Angus Hutton, a tea planter in the adjoining High Wavy Mountains tea estate, had recorded that the Malabar Civet was ‘very common', but there is a strong suspicion that he had misidentified the Small Indian Civet. By 1939, it was feared that the Malabar Civet was becoming rare and close to extinction. Excitedly we wrote in the register that we had seen a pair of Malabar Civets, the most elusive Indian mammal.
But Ajith Kumar of Centre for Wildlife Studies (whose logo is a Malabar Civet) doubted that we had seen it. He suggested that the little civet is so widespread across so many different habitats, altitudes and latitudes that there was tremendous variation in features, pattern and size.
One biologist asked if the civets we had seen had a mane, but we hadn't noticed. Three stripes along the throat? We thought we saw something like that. Another asked if we noticed whether the bands completely encircled the tail. Don't know, it was too dark. Did they have black tail tips? Huh? Unfortunately, we hadn't known these were the features to look for.
Last week, R. Nandini and Divya Mudappa, two experts on small mammals, published an account of their investigations on the Malabar Civet. They examined six skins and three skulls held in various museums in the U.K. and India, and pored over everything ever written by wildlife experts 1800s onwards.
The Malabar Civet was reportedly found in the lowland coastal forests of the Western Ghats from Karwar (northern Karnataka) to Trivandrum.
There had been a few sightings far inland in Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary, Tirunelveli, and in the hills of the High Wavys. But, most of the sightings were around Kozhikode. No other civet cat in Asia is so narrowly restricted in range.
Nandini and Divya agreed with the possibility that the Malabar Civet may have become extremely rare from being hunted for its famous musk. But, could they really be so finicky that they couldn't tolerate the conversion of their forests to plantations when other civets thrived?
There was no real clarity on what a Malabar Civet looks like, the origin of the museum specimens were obscure, and their identity uncertain as mammalogists contradicted each other. To confuse matters further, the Large-spotted Civet of Southeast Asia and the Malabar Civet look almost identical. This suggested an alternate conclusion that is truly revolutionary: the Malabar Civet may never have existed!
Over millennia, civet cats were traded among Ethiopia, Southeast Asia and India for civetone, a secretion of the anal musk glands used in traditional medicine, perfumery and as a religious offering.
Even today, Small Indian Civets are maintained on farms in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, for the extraction of musk. Kozhikode, the centre of most recent Malabar Civet sightings, was a well-known trading port since ancient times. Nandini and Divya wondered if there was a possibility that Large-spotted Civets brought from Southeast Asia escaped from captivity, leading to occasional sightings in the wild.
This is not so farfetched, as captive Small Indian Civets have escaped and established themselves in countries such as Madagascar, Philippines, and other islands of Southeast Asia.
So, it is distinctly possible that the Malabar Civet may actually be nothing more unique than the Large-spotted Civet.
Genetic analysis will go one step further in answering the question: do Malabar Civets exist?
http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/metroplus/article958890.ece
Almost six decades earlier, Angus Hutton, a tea planter in the adjoining High Wavy Mountains tea estate, had recorded that the Malabar Civet was ‘very common', but there is a strong suspicion that he had misidentified the Small Indian Civet. By 1939, it was feared that the Malabar Civet was becoming rare and close to extinction. Excitedly we wrote in the register that we had seen a pair of Malabar Civets, the most elusive Indian mammal.
But Ajith Kumar of Centre for Wildlife Studies (whose logo is a Malabar Civet) doubted that we had seen it. He suggested that the little civet is so widespread across so many different habitats, altitudes and latitudes that there was tremendous variation in features, pattern and size.
One biologist asked if the civets we had seen had a mane, but we hadn't noticed. Three stripes along the throat? We thought we saw something like that. Another asked if we noticed whether the bands completely encircled the tail. Don't know, it was too dark. Did they have black tail tips? Huh? Unfortunately, we hadn't known these were the features to look for.
Last week, R. Nandini and Divya Mudappa, two experts on small mammals, published an account of their investigations on the Malabar Civet. They examined six skins and three skulls held in various museums in the U.K. and India, and pored over everything ever written by wildlife experts 1800s onwards.
The Malabar Civet was reportedly found in the lowland coastal forests of the Western Ghats from Karwar (northern Karnataka) to Trivandrum.
There had been a few sightings far inland in Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary, Tirunelveli, and in the hills of the High Wavys. But, most of the sightings were around Kozhikode. No other civet cat in Asia is so narrowly restricted in range.
Nandini and Divya agreed with the possibility that the Malabar Civet may have become extremely rare from being hunted for its famous musk. But, could they really be so finicky that they couldn't tolerate the conversion of their forests to plantations when other civets thrived?
There was no real clarity on what a Malabar Civet looks like, the origin of the museum specimens were obscure, and their identity uncertain as mammalogists contradicted each other. To confuse matters further, the Large-spotted Civet of Southeast Asia and the Malabar Civet look almost identical. This suggested an alternate conclusion that is truly revolutionary: the Malabar Civet may never have existed!
Over millennia, civet cats were traded among Ethiopia, Southeast Asia and India for civetone, a secretion of the anal musk glands used in traditional medicine, perfumery and as a religious offering.
Even today, Small Indian Civets are maintained on farms in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, for the extraction of musk. Kozhikode, the centre of most recent Malabar Civet sightings, was a well-known trading port since ancient times. Nandini and Divya wondered if there was a possibility that Large-spotted Civets brought from Southeast Asia escaped from captivity, leading to occasional sightings in the wild.
This is not so farfetched, as captive Small Indian Civets have escaped and established themselves in countries such as Madagascar, Philippines, and other islands of Southeast Asia.
So, it is distinctly possible that the Malabar Civet may actually be nothing more unique than the Large-spotted Civet.
Genetic analysis will go one step further in answering the question: do Malabar Civets exist?
http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/metroplus/article958890.ece
Monday, October 4, 2010
Indian carnivore eats mostly fruit
mongabay.com
September 27, 2010
When is a carnivore no longer a carnivore? A new study in mongabay.com's open access journal Tropical Conservation Science has found that the brown palm civet (Paradoxurus jerdoni), a cat-sized tree-loving carnivore, lives almost entirely off fruit and seeds. Studying over a 1000 feces from the brown palm civet during three years, researchers found that 97 percent of its diet was composed of plants, not meat. Given its penchant for fruit, researchers argue that the brown palm civet is an important disperser of tropical plants, playing a vital ecological role rarely connected to civets.
In total researchers found that the brown palm civet consumed 53 native plant species, 4 introduced plants, and 8 plants which could not be identified.
"Brown palm civets carry seeds away from under the parent trees and defecate them virtually undamaged, with seed germination viability being retained or even enhanced in some species," write the study's authors, arguing that this species of civets plays a large role in effectively dispersing seeds.
When not feeding on plants, the civets turned largely to invertebrates, eating vertebrates—mammals, birds, or reptiles—only 4 percent of the time. While other civets have been known to eat fruits, this study confirms that India's brown palm civet is "one of the most frugivorous" carnivores in the world, according to the writers. Only the kinkajou of the Neotropics surpasses it.
The researchers argue that the brown palm civet could play a big role in forest restoration efforts given "their ability to persist in fragmented rainforest landscapes, including small and/or degraded fragments". The fact that many other seed dispersers are absent from forest fragments makes the brown palm civet even more important.
Endemic to the Western Ghats of India, the brown palm civet is listed as Least Concern by the IUCN Red List. However continued forest conversion to agriculture has raised some concerns, since the species appears to require access to rainforest in order to survive.
CITATION: Mudappa, D., Kumar, A., and Chellam, R. 2010. Diet and fruit choice of the brown palm civet Paradoxurus jerdoni, a viverrid endemic to the Western Ghats rainforest, India. Tropical Conservation Science Vol. 3 (3):282-300.
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0927-hance_tcs_civet.html
(Submitted by Chad Arment)
Indian carnivore eats mostly fruit
mongabay.com
September 27, 2010
When is a carnivore no longer a carnivore? A new study in mongabay.com's open access journal Tropical Conservation Science has found that the brown palm civet (Paradoxurus jerdoni), a cat-sized tree-loving carnivore, lives almost entirely off fruit and seeds. Studying over a 1000 feces from the brown palm civet during three years, researchers found that 97 percent of its diet was composed of plants, not meat. Given its penchant for fruit, researchers argue that the brown palm civet is an important disperser of tropical plants, playing a vital ecological role rarely connected to civets.
In total researchers found that the brown palm civet consumed 53 native plant species, 4 introduced plants, and 8 plants which could not be identified.
"Brown palm civets carry seeds away from under the parent trees and defecate them virtually undamaged, with seed germination viability being retained or even enhanced in some species," write the study's authors, arguing that this species of civets plays a large role in effectively dispersing seeds.
When not feeding on plants, the civets turned largely to invertebrates, eating vertebrates—mammals, birds, or reptiles—only 4 percent of the time. While other civets have been known to eat fruits, this study confirms that India's brown palm civet is "one of the most frugivorous" carnivores in the world, according to the writers. Only the kinkajou of the Neotropics surpasses it.
The researchers argue that the brown palm civet could play a big role in forest restoration efforts given "their ability to persist in fragmented rainforest landscapes, including small and/or degraded fragments". The fact that many other seed dispersers are absent from forest fragments makes the brown palm civet even more important.
Endemic to the Western Ghats of India, the brown palm civet is listed as Least Concern by the IUCN Red List. However continued forest conversion to agriculture has raised some concerns, since the species appears to require access to rainforest in order to survive.
CITATION: Mudappa, D., Kumar, A., and Chellam, R. 2010. Diet and fruit choice of the brown palm civet Paradoxurus jerdoni, a viverrid endemic to the Western Ghats rainforest, India. Tropical Conservation Science Vol. 3 (3):282-300.
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0927-hance_tcs_civet.html
(Submitted by Chad Arment)
Indonesia’s Coffee Bean-Excreting Civet Cats a Distinct Species: Scientists
Paris. The Asian palm civet, a small nocturnal carnivore famous for excreting coffee beans prized by gourmets, in fact comprises three species, French scientists said on Wednesday.
Instead of one species, until now known as Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, there should be three, according to molecular biologists at the Museum of National History in Paris.
The species have developed separately in different habitats — northeastern India; Southeast Asia, including Indonesia; and parts of Borneo and the Philippines.
Tree-loving and fruit-eating, palm civets are arguably best known for a smooth-tasting Indonesian coffee known as Kopi Luwak.
Its beans come from the ripest fruits eaten by the civet, which are claimed to pass through its digestive tract unscathed, enhanced by enzymes.
Retrieved from the faeces, the beans are roasted before being sold for up to 500 dollars per kilogram. Only 200 kilos of the coffee are produced each year.
Agence France-Presse
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/technology/indonesias-coffee-bean-excreting-civet-cats-a-distinct-species-scientists/398865
(Submitted by Chad Arment)
Instead of one species, until now known as Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, there should be three, according to molecular biologists at the Museum of National History in Paris.
The species have developed separately in different habitats — northeastern India; Southeast Asia, including Indonesia; and parts of Borneo and the Philippines.
Tree-loving and fruit-eating, palm civets are arguably best known for a smooth-tasting Indonesian coffee known as Kopi Luwak.
Its beans come from the ripest fruits eaten by the civet, which are claimed to pass through its digestive tract unscathed, enhanced by enzymes.
Retrieved from the faeces, the beans are roasted before being sold for up to 500 dollars per kilogram. Only 200 kilos of the coffee are produced each year.
Agence France-Presse
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/technology/indonesias-coffee-bean-excreting-civet-cats-a-distinct-species-scientists/398865
(Submitted by Chad Arment)
Indonesia’s Coffee Bean-Excreting Civet Cats a Distinct Species: Scientists
Paris. The Asian palm civet, a small nocturnal carnivore famous for excreting coffee beans prized by gourmets, in fact comprises three species, French scientists said on Wednesday.
Instead of one species, until now known as Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, there should be three, according to molecular biologists at the Museum of National History in Paris.
The species have developed separately in different habitats — northeastern India; Southeast Asia, including Indonesia; and parts of Borneo and the Philippines.
Tree-loving and fruit-eating, palm civets are arguably best known for a smooth-tasting Indonesian coffee known as Kopi Luwak.
Its beans come from the ripest fruits eaten by the civet, which are claimed to pass through its digestive tract unscathed, enhanced by enzymes.
Retrieved from the faeces, the beans are roasted before being sold for up to 500 dollars per kilogram. Only 200 kilos of the coffee are produced each year.
Agence France-Presse
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/technology/indonesias-coffee-bean-excreting-civet-cats-a-distinct-species-scientists/398865
(Submitted by Chad Arment)
Instead of one species, until now known as Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, there should be three, according to molecular biologists at the Museum of National History in Paris.
The species have developed separately in different habitats — northeastern India; Southeast Asia, including Indonesia; and parts of Borneo and the Philippines.
Tree-loving and fruit-eating, palm civets are arguably best known for a smooth-tasting Indonesian coffee known as Kopi Luwak.
Its beans come from the ripest fruits eaten by the civet, which are claimed to pass through its digestive tract unscathed, enhanced by enzymes.
Retrieved from the faeces, the beans are roasted before being sold for up to 500 dollars per kilogram. Only 200 kilos of the coffee are produced each year.
Agence France-Presse
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/technology/indonesias-coffee-bean-excreting-civet-cats-a-distinct-species-scientists/398865
(Submitted by Chad Arment)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)