African Palm Civets (Nandinia binotata): Ringtails of Central Africa From West Coast to East

African two-spotted palm civets act like civets by:

• Avoiding conflict;

• Controlling pests;

• Dispersing seeds;

• Eluding predators;

• Producing musk;

• Smelling musky.

They appear like civets by displaying:

• Spotted bodies;

• Striped tails.

They communicate like civets by:

• Barking, clicking, growling, hooting, mewing, purring, and screaming;

• Releasing stink-bombs against predatory mammals, raptors, and reptiles;

• Scent-marking routes and territory.

But scientists consider African two-spotted palm civets unlike all other African and Asian civets. They depend upon scientific advances and technological breakthroughs to problem-solve the genetic enigma of African two-spotted palm civets. In the meantime, they express their phylogenetic suspicions by assigning to African two-spotted palm civets a genus and a species all their own, Nandinia binotata.  

Bio-geographical and physical subtleties divide species. The first subspecies, the nominate (“first-named”), gets the species' name: Nandinia binotata binotata (John Edward Gray [February 12, 1800 – March 7, 1875], 1830) -- Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Centrafrique, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo. Others include:

• arborea (Edmund Heller [May 21, 1875 – July 18, 1939], 1913) -- Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda;

• gerrardi (Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas [February 21, 1858 – June 16, 1929], 1893) -- Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe;

• intensa (Ángel Cabrera y Latorre [February 19, 1879 – January 7, 1960] and A.E. Ruxton, 1926) -- Angola, Congo-Kinshasa, Zambia.   

Bio-geography differentiates subspecies into non-overlapping and overlapping homelands. Appearances contrastingly differ slightly while behavioral and habitat/niche preferences vary not at all. All African two-spotted palm civets indeed display:

• Alert, rounded ears;

• Dark-, longitudinal-, triple-striped napes;

• Muscular, short limbs;

• Pointed muzzles;

• Prickly-textured tongues;

• Short paws, with hairless, pink, thick-padded soles;

• 12 incisors, 4 canines, 16 premolars, 8 molars;

• 20 curved, semi-retractile claws;

• 20 digits;

• White-blotched shoulders;

• Yellow-green eyes with vertical pupils.

Their long, thick pelage mottles brown, light tan, or yellow with dark, upper-body hairs and spots. Their tails sequence rings into alternating darker and lighter bands. The totality serves as perfect camouflage for tree-dwellers crepuscularly active for 3 – 4 hours each following dusk and preceding dawn.

Sylvan and wooded habitat niches accommodate the opportunistic omnivore in question's life cycles and natural histories. African two-spotted palm civets favor:

• Actual evapo-transpiration of 47.8 inches (1,214.08 millimeters) monthly;

• Altitudes up to 6,561.68 – 8,202.10 feet (2,000 – 2,500 meters) above sea level;

• Dense forests and jungles;

• Fruit-bearing trees (especially corkwood [Myrianthus], fig [Ficus], oil-palm [Elaeis guineensis], sugar plum [Uapaca], umbrella [Musanga]);

• Rainfall of 5.13 inches (130.21 millimeters) monthly;

• Temperatures of 75.2°F (24°C).

But the bottom line is access to:

• Fruits;

• 39.37+ inches (1,000+ millimeters) of annual precipitation.

These two conditions let African two-spotted palm civets tolerate:

• Deciduous, gallery, lowland, montane, riverine forests;

• Logged, secondary-growth forest edges;

• Savannah – woodland mosaics.   

Fruits dominate the diets of the obligate pest-controlling, seed-dispersing environmentalist in question. But African two-spotted palm civets also enjoy:

• Arthropods;

• Carrion;

• Eggs;

• Small amphibians, birds, mammals (especially fruit bats), and reptiles.

They generally forage alone to:

• Ambush prey;

• Bite rapidly and repeatedly the nape of the neck;

• Swallow whole.

They immobilize prey with agile fore-limbs while anchoring on plush tail and rotated hind-paws. But they gather in groups of 15+ on particularly fruit-laden trees. They typically hunt from single-occupancy dens:

• Among tangled vines;

• In hollow logs, rock crevices, or tree holes;

• On tree forks;

• Under overgrown shrubs and thick vegetation.

They locate plants and prey by super-sensitive, super-sharp detection of:

• Movements;

• Smells;

• Sounds;

• Textures.   

Camouflaged appearances and savvy behaviors convince conservationists not to question African two-spotted palm civet sustainability. The cat-, ferret-, mongoose-, skunk-like mammals in question dominate:

• Bordering female with male home and territorial ranges;

• Demarcating communal latrines, escape routes, and food stops;

• Exuding brown musk from abdominal glands and floral fruitiness from chin and paw glands;

• Mating during rainy, vegetation-rich, warm months;

• Producing 2 – 4 annual litters of 1 – 4 furry offspring after 60+-day gestations;

• Staining pups with orange-yellow stenches until weaning at 60 days.

They have in place adjacent and overlapping communities of extended families whose young realize:

• Independent households at 90 days;

• Sexual maturity at 3 years;

• Survival expectancies of 20+ years.   

African two-spotted palm civets exemplify sustainability. They mature from 1.94-ounce (55-gram) newborns into adults with:

• Head-and-body lengths of 14.57 – 24.80 inches (37 – 63 centimeters);

• Tail lengths of 13.39 - 29.92 inches (34 – 76 centimeters);

• Weights of 3.31 – 11.02 pounds (1.5 – 5 kilograms).

They relish fruit binges, mating mixers, and single-occupancy dens within home ranges of 0.21 – 0.25 square miles (0.55 – 0.65 square kilometers). But modernist – traditionalist interactions throughout urban – wildland interfaces strengthen agro-industrialists, over-hunters, perfumists, and physicians respectively prioritizing:

• Land;

• Market-destined bow coverings, bracelets, bushmeat, dresses, and hats;

• Perfume stabilizers;

• Traditional medicines.

Survival-savvy African two-spotted palm civets warrant:

• Governmental protection;

• Scientific investigation;

• Wildlife-loving activism.   

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

African Palm Civet (Nandinia binotata)
Manchester Museum, Manchester, North West England: Subhumanfreak at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nandinia_binotata,_Manchester_Museum.jpg

Distribution data from IUCN Red List: Chermundy/IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:African_Palm_Civet_area.png

Nandinia binotata: American Museum of Natural History specimen no. 51504, old male from Niapu, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
J.A. Allen, "Carnivora Collected by the American Museum Congo Expedition."
Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. XLVII, Art. III (April 11, 1924), Figure 38, page 152: via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/bulletinamerican47ameruoft/page/152/mode/1up

African Palm Civet (Nandinia binotata), under synonym of Paradoxurus hamiltonii
John Edward Gray, Illustrations of Indian Zoology, Vol. II (1833-1834), Plate 10: Public Domain Mark 1.0, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/IllustrationsOfIndianZoology2/page/n28/mode/1up

African Palm Civet's iconic native landscape: north-central Tanzania's Ngorongoro Conservation Area
view of Ngorongoro from inside the crater: SajjadF, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ngorongoro_view_(28_12_2010).jpg

African Palm Civet (Nandinia binotata)
illustration by William Stephen Coleman (1829 - 1904)
J.G. Wood, The Illustrated Natural History, Vol. I Mammalia (1859), page 244: Public Domain, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15491437

Nandinia binotata: juvenile male from Niangara, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
J.A. Allen, "Carnivora Collected by the American Museum Congo Expedition."
Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. XLVII, Art. III (April 11, 1924), Plate XXI, Figure 2: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carnivora_Collected_by_the_American_Museum_Congo_Expedition_(1922-1925)_plate_xxi_fig._2.png

African Palm Civet's iconic native ecosystems: source of the Nile River in southeastern Uganda
Source-of-the-Nile launches (Victoria Nile river), Lake Victoria, Jinja, southeastern Uganda: Cory Doctorow (gruntzooki), CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Source_of_the_Nile,_Jinja.jpg

African Palm Civet's native landscapes: Palimé Falls
Palimé (Kpalimé) Falls, Plateaux Region, southwestern Togo: Vincent C sur Wikipedia français, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chute_de_Kpalimé.jpg

African Palm Civet's iconic faunal and geographic landscape: African elephants (Loxodonta) in south central Kenya
Amboseli National Park, Kajiado District, Rift Valley Province, south central Kenya, East Africa: Amoghavarsha amoghavarsha.com, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elephants_at_Amboseli_national_park_against_Mount_Kilimanjaro.jpg

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