Colours of Wildlife: African Palm Civet
Created | Updated Feb 7, 2016
African Palm Civet
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
This enigmatic mammal, Nandinia binotata, is also known as a Tree Civet or a Two-spotted Palm Civet. The two white spots aren't very helpful … they lie just behind the shoulders and only one of them is visible in my painting. This animal looks quite similar to a genet, but is somewhat more sturdily built with a shorter, rounder head and face. It reaches an overall length of 1 m/39" and a bodyweight of 3.2 kg/7 lbs. This animal is widespread in lowland as well as montane forests in tropical Africa. In Southern Africa, it's only found in Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
A Unique Feliform
Although it has 'civet' in its name, the tree civet is not really closely related to civets, or to genets for that matter. It belongs to the branch of the carnivore order containing the cat-like critters: cats themselves, the genets and civets, mongooses and hyenas, but it is about equally distantly related to all of those, having probably split off from the rest as much as 44 million years ago, when the carnivore order was still in its infancy. It is sometimes classified in a distinct subfamily of the genet and civet family, but if it is indeed that distinct, it warrants a family of its own, the Nandinidae. There are palm civets in southeast Asia as well, but those are not close relatives of it, instead being quite close to other genets and civets.
Outwardly it doesn't betray much of its uniqueness. It is well-adapted to its particular way of life, though. It is long-bodied and short-limbed, with quite a long tail. Like cats, it has retractile claws with pads at the bottom, with which it can clamber around in the trees. Its compact body is strong and muscular, with great flexibility in its shoulder and hip girdles, and it is able to hang upside down from its hind limbs. It is also able to survive falls from great heights with little damage. Its front paws are very dextrous so it can use them to manipulate food and other items. The inner toes of front as well as hind feet are offset from the others and can turn inward to meet them, improving their its grasping ability. It is very omnivorous, eating small animals that it can catch, as well as fruits – especially those of oil palms – and carrion, if it can find it.
The tree civet is dark in appearance, with short, dense fur. In the dark, dense forest, it is not easily seen. It tends to be active at night, staying in their lairs – cavities in trees, or dense tangles of creepers – during the day. Tree civets tend to be solitary, but they can have overlapping territories. For communication, tree civets make a variety of sounds – mews, purrs, growls, spitting noises, screams and clucks. They also communicate by scent. They have glands on their lower abdomens that secrete a musk-like substance, with which they mark their territories. They also have scent glands on their chins and the palms of their front and rear paws. Females with young babies have glands on their bellies making a smelly, yellow liquid with which she marks them, staining their fur yellow. Tree civets probably also use their urine and droppings for territorial markings. All in all, scent appears to be very important to them.
At present, these civets are not threatened with extinction. They have a very wide distribution in Africa, and are even able to survive the destruction of the forests, being able to live in regenerating forest as well as taking advantage of human cultivation such as plantations of oil palms or fruit trees. Despite this, they are not nearly as well known to science as they should be, and there is much about them and their lifestyles that we still don't know.
