Viverridae Spotlight: Brown Palm Civet

I gotta tell ya... Finding information on civets is difficult. It is much easier to find information on the weird ones that makes perfume and coffee than the other breeds. The brown palm civet is likely the final civet I will be writing about--despite there being a number of others. I really just jumped on this guy because of his looks.

From head to tail, the brown palm civet is 24 inches with a surprising tail length of 20 inches. Their fur can be a range from light to very dark brown. Their tail is often tipped with white or pale yellow. They can be found in the Western Ghats of India--a very small area in reality.

The brown palm civet is primarily a fungivore. This means that it loves fruit. It does much of its feeding at night and spends its days up in trees sleeping and just generally relaxed. This particular civet is actually endemic to its location. As it eats these fruit, it carries it around, and the seeds fall out all over the place. It actually helps perpetuate the plants in that area. The fact that they do this is so important that if you were to remove the civets from this area, the act would take the fruit trees along with it given some time.

As I said earlier, the brown palm civet spends its days in trees, but it is not enough that they get to lay on a branch. It rather enjoys the nest made by a local rodent called the Indian giant squirrel. If he finds a squirrel nest, he'll settle right down in it whether it's occupied or not. What a jerk! Otherwise, this civet will just find a comfortable place to hang loose.

I do not know any fiction specifically for the brown palm civet, but I'd like to think they are the relaxed sort individually. Most of the pictures I find of them show them being rather lazy up in trees. They remind me a lot of tiny panthers. As a character, they would likely make for good moochers and fridge-raiders. Naturally, the house he always visits happens to be home to a squirrel.

This is it for the civets. I hope you enjoyed them! They ended up being a favorite of mine, and it makes me smile that there are such hidden beauties in the animal kingdom. Stay tuned for next week where there will be a brief return to an old order.

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