The strangest aspects of the human experience

Binturongs

07/12/2024

Given my track record with weird animals (the kakapo, the tree kangaroo), and the fact that I tend to do topics that are very heavy and, quite frankly, fucking depressing, I decided it was time to go back to animals!

I have not seen a binturong in person, as far as I can recall. I certainly hope I would have remembered something that looks like a cross between a cat, a small bear, and a racoon, with a prehensile tail that's roughly the weight of a kindergartener.

Let's start with the basics of the binturong. It is a viverrid native to South and Southeast Asia (India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Indonesia), and is listed as "Vulnerable" on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List because of its declining population. To be listed as vulnerable, it means the species meets "one of the 5 Red List criteria and thus considered to be at high risk of unnatural (human-caused) extinction without further human intervention."

Episode: File 0133: Trasmoz Hot Binturongs

Release Date: July 12 2024

Researched and presented by Halli

What is a viverrid?

"Viverridae is a family of small to medium-sized, feliform (cat-like carnivores - cats, hyenas, mongooses, etc) mammals." Viverrids have some common characteristics - four or five toes on each foot and half-retractile claws; six incisors in each jaw and molars with grinders in the upper jaw and one in the lower jaw; and a prickly tongue. They're found all over Africa, southern Europe, and South and Southeast Asia, across the Wallace Line.

  • The Wallace line, or Wallace's line, is a boundary line drawn in 1859 by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (a colleague of Darwin who independently conceived the theory of evolution by natural selection; Wallace's theory was published in 1858, and Darwin's in 1859. Wallace is a fascinating individual, as someone who heavily believed in spiritualism and was one of the first prominent scientists to raise concerns over human impact on the Earth.)

Binturongs are homebodies – they're very rarely found outside their small home range, and with their population having declined at least 30% since the mid 1980s, these rare creatures can be hard to spot in the wild, even though they…stand out. A lot.

Ankles that rotate 180 degrees, a prehensile tail, coarse fur, and they weigh around 50 lbs. They might be called bear-cats, but they don't really resemble either. Binturongs, unlike their civet cousins, don't really have feline features nor their grace. And while they're in the order of Carnivora, they pretty much only eat fruit, eggs, plant shoots, and small invertebrates. But they will eat meat, especially in captivity. According to the San Diego zoo, their favorite food is grapes, with tomatoes, apples, bananas, and yams holding up the back.

A few other fun facts:

  • The tail is nearly as long as the head and body

    • It's been described as roughly the size of a coyote

  • Females typically outweigh the males (average 54 lbs vs 48 lbs)

  • Yes, they smell like popcorn; the scent is used to warn off other animals, and to let other binturongs know that it's time to mate

  • Young binturongs tend to have lighter colored fur, like straw or gray, and then darken as they get older

  • They're active during day AND night

  • They're largely arboreal, climbing trees with great skill but sloth-like speed

  • They use their tails to communicate

  • They're extremely important to the ecology of where they live, since their droppings help deposit seeds and propagate plant growth

  • Their lifespan in captivity is about 25 years; in the wild, it's between 16 and 18 years

  • Natural predators include tigers and dholes, as well as clouded leopards

  • They're usually solitary in the wild and only come together to mate; mothers stay with the offspring until the young are big enough to fend for themselves (a whopping 6 to 8 weeks, but by this time, they're the size of a housecat)

  • Females give birth to 1 to 4 binlets (the name for their babies), and they're born with their eyes closed for the first few days of their lives

One of the things I found the most fascinating is "the female binturong is only one of a few mammals that can experience delayed implantation, which allows the female to time the birth of her young with good environmental conditions". Mating can take place at any time of the year, and the female controls when her babies are born.

Binturongs are also noisy - they make tons of sounds.

And finally, they have a special relationship with the strangler fig. This fig cannot germinate without assistance, and the binturong is only one of two known animals with digestive enzymes capable of softening the tough shell of these figs' seeds

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