,Having complained in a recent post of the absence of wildlife in our local area, I was surprised by news tonight of an incident involving binturongs (or musangs as they're known locally). I was aware of the existence of these animals in the local area and that they prowl around of a night. I had even caught a glimpse of one maybe a year or so ago but I'd never thought too much about them. However, yesterday evening, our neighbours (father, mother and adolescent son) were sitting in the front of their house when they noticed two musangs descend from a nearby tree. Suddenly, the animals charged toward them and the family retreated. This was only a ploy however, because the musangs turned and carried off the family cat that had been relaxing out front as well.
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I've never heard of musangs killing cats and there is nothing in the literature about such attacks. They regularly attack chickens, rats and birds but not cats. This cat wasn't a kitten. It was a fully grown female. The recent cull of poultry in the area (to reduce the risk of bird flu) and the fact that fruit is currently out-of-season suggests that they may have been driven by hunger to launch this audacious attack. The photo in this post is not one of the said miscreants but instead is a photo taken from a very interesting blog called The Voltage Gate at:
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There is some fascinating information there about these animals. The binturong can grow to a metre in length and weigh 15 kg. It is also known as a bearcat and is one of several species of civet whose anal gland secretions can be used to make perfume. Interestingly:
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The binturong is the only Old World mammal to evolve a fully prehensile tail, meaning the tail is dexterous enough to be used to manipulate objects, like food items. The rest of the mammals possessing a fully prehensile tail are only found in North and South America (monkeys, opossums).
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So I'm reading up on this little known but most interesting animal, partly out of curiosity and partly out of apprehension because we have recently acquired a small, white dog by the name of Gromit who is not much larger than the ill-fated white cat that was carried off. We normally leave her outside of a night but tonight we have brought her inside just in case the musangs strike again.
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Sabina, our resident four year old, had been maddenly insistent for several months that we purchase a dog. Her constant whine was "beli anjing" (buy dog) and eventually resistance crumbled. The catalyst was an ill-advised visit by her grandmother to the pet shop a couple of hundred metres away. Sabina spied a white toy poodle, about three months old, and there was an air of inevitability to the purchase after that. I was consulted as the final arbiter in the matter but because I had once owned a toy poodle by the name of Chloe, I felt it was a case of kismet.
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It would be difficult explaining to Sabina that her beloved Gromit had been carried off in the night by marauding musangs.
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