Malabar Civet

About this species

Size

One captive male: head and body 76cm; tail 33cm

Weight

One captive male: 6.6kg

Habitat

Forest of the Western Ghats

Range

Western Ghats, India

The Malabar large-spotted civet is endemic to the Western Ghats of India, where it is known in Kerala as kannan chandu, male meru and veruku, and in Karnataka as mangala kutri, bal kutri and dodda punugina. It is dusky grey with a white throat and neck and a tail ringed with dark bands. The dark spots are more pronounced than in the large Indian civet, and the soles of the feet are more naked. One male kept at Trivandrum zoo in the 1930s measured 76 cm in head and body and weighed 6.6 kg (Wikipedia, general species account).

Extensive deforestation reduced most of the natural forests of the coastal Western Ghats up to the 1960s. One animal was sighted in Kerala in 1987, and in the early 1990s isolated populations still survived in less disturbed parts of South Malabar, threatened by habitat destruction and hunting outside protected areas. It was not recorded during surveys between 1990 and 2014. It is considered nocturnal and so elusive that little is known of its biology (Wikipedia, general species account).

Description: Wildlife of India guide, Wildlife of Everywhere (wildlifeofeverywhere.com); general species information paraphrased from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)