Bourlon's Genets (Genetta bourloni): Ringtails of Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone

Sightings of Bourlon’s genets are rare. They cluster around one of two venues:

• Markets;

• Museums.

So non-specialists and scientists generally do not count upon observing Bourlon’s genets as living inhabitants of parks, reserves, wildlands or zoos. They instead expect to find them as fresh bush-meat and processed furs in local bazaars or as lifeless specimens in natural history collections. Twenty-nine preserved samples from the two above-mentioned sources indeed fill museum holdings worldwide. They originate in:

• Gatherings from the wild for mis-categorization or non-classification;

• Recoveries from the butcher’s block.

One of the older specimens in fact traces back to Oda, Ghana in 1946. More recent specimens regularly turn up in southeast Guinea's bush-meat markets. 

Technology can take up the slack from unshared village anecdotes of local hunters and unsuccessful in-person observations of Bourlon's genets in the field and in the wild. Camera-traps and radio-telemetry contribute to understanding enigmatic fauna if their placement and range are judicious. Specialists find just case for optimism in this regard since they can guesstimate the bio-geography of Bourlon's genets, thanks to in-print and on-line information-sharing from 2003 onward by the ring-tailed mammal's official discoverer, Philippe Gaubert. So they know to direct technology to niches within the upper rainforests of:

• Ghana;

• Guiana;

• Ivory Coast;

• Sierra Leone.

But appropriate location and proper scope still may not guarantee success since Bourlon's genets are super-intelligent eluders of:

• Competitors;

• People;

• Predators.   

Tracking devices have to be penetrate the African rainforest's prevailing low-light conditions. They also must differentiate between Bourlon's genets and such sympatric genets of overlapping distributions and similar habitats as Johnston's, king and large-spotted genets (Genetta johnstoni, G. poensis, and G. maculata). They need to get beyond what all non-aquatic genets showcase:

• Alert ears;

• Big, dark-adapted, rounded eyes;

• Elongated neck;

• 5 digits per paw, each armed with a curved, retractable, sharp, short claw and responsible for fast, graceful digitigrade (“on the digits,” tiptoes) locomotion;

• Fox-like, pointed muzzle;

• Muscular, short limbs;

• Musky-smelling, self-defensive, territory-marking scent glands;

• Raccoon-like ring-patterned tail;

• Sharp teeth realizing cat-like, lethal, nape-of-the-neck, painless, quick bites to prey;

• Sinewy, spotted body;

• Squirrel-like reversible ankles;

• Super-sensory whiskers.   

Bourlon's genets fit in with the dark-spotted, dark-and-light-striped, and light-bodied looks of all non-aquatic genets. They individualize:

• Broad forehead; 

• Brown markings;

• Dark, shoulder-to-tail-base spinal stripe;

• Cream-grey ground coloration;

• Dark cheeks, chin-line, eyebrows, and nose;

• Dark lower limbs and paws, with soles furry between paw pads;

• Darkened tail, from mid-point to tip;

• Light-ringed chin, ear, eyes, mouth, nose, and throat;

• Rough, short fur measuring 0.79 – 1.18 inches (20 – 30 millimeters) on the tail.

The spots in the uppermost corporeal rows each merge into 2 mid-back-to-tail-base stripes. The tail sports:

• Alternating series of 5 – 7 thin off-white and wide brown rings;

• Long, thin, stripe running the upper tail's length.

Experts find Bourlon's genet-related anecdotes and data historically sparse. They hypothesize genet-consistent:

• Avoiding competitive mammals (including co-viverrids), raptors, and reptiles;

• Delivering annually 1 – 4 grey-furred offspring born briefly blind and deaf;

• Demarcating same-gender – and overlapping opposite-gender – home ranges;

• Foraging nightly from day-occupied burrows and hollows.

They know that Bourlon's genets realize physical and sexual maturity, with:

• Dentition of 12 incisors, 4 canines, 16 premolars, and 8 molars evenly distributed between lower and upper jaws;

• Head-and-body lengths of 19.29 – 19.69 inches (490 – 500 millimeters);

• Tail lengths of 15.75 – 16.54 inches (400 – 420 millimeters);

• Weights of 3.31 – 4.41 pounds (1.5 – 2 kilograms).   

The position of Bourlon's genets within their rainforest habitats tentatively can be considered sustainable, currently and future-wise. Survival temporarily goes unchallenged precisely because of the ring-tailed viverrid's recognized bio-geography by Philippe Gaubert, as:

• Dissertation author of Systématique et phylogénie du genre Genetta et des énigmatiques "genetlike taxa" Prionodon, Poiana et Osbornictis (Carnivora, Viverridae): caractérisation de la sous-famille des Viverrinae et étude des patrons de diversification au sein du continent africain;

• Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle scientist;

• Viverrid specialist, particularly of genets and linsangs.

Philippe indeed places Bourlon's genets with co-rainforest-specific king (Genetta poensis) and Schouteden's (G. schoutedeni) genets. The remote niches inhabited by these genets currently resist large-scale:

• Construction;

• Farming;

• Logging;

• Mining;

• Ranching.   

Philippe Gaubert is responsible for the common and taxonomic names of Bourlon's genets (Genetta bourloni). Both names memorialize Philippe Bourlon's outstanding tenure at the Paris-Vincennes zoo, 1978 – 2001. They persuade Philippe's contemporaries to uncover other popular designations -- to join the extra-regional, Swahili word kano for all genets -- since Bourlon's genets inspire interest in four coastal west African countries.

The discovery hopefully will be accompanied by the proliferation of governmental protection and scientific research preceding environmentally-friendly policies and practices regarding the life cycles and natural histories of Bourlon's genets in particular and world-stressed fauna and flora in particular. Effectively resolving sustainability threats from agro-industrialism, environmental pollution, globally-warmed climate change, and over-hunting will require nothing less.  

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

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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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bourlon's_Genet_area.png

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German Federal Archives, Koblenz, Rhineland-Palatinate state (Rheinland-Pfalz), west central Germany: Bundesarchiv, Bild 105-DSWA0011 / Walther Dobbertin / CC-BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_105-DSWA0011,_Deutsch-Süd-Westafrika,_Stinkkatze.jpg

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Parc zoologique de Paris (pre-2014: Parc zoologique du Bois de Vincennes), still called zoo de Vincennes (Vincennes Zoo): Georges Seguin (Okki), CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parc_zoologique_de_Vincennes_20060816_19.jpg

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