| Oriental Civet | |
|---|---|
| Conservation status | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Family: | Viverridae |
| Genus: | Viverra |
| Species: | V. tangalunga |
| Binomial name | |
| Viverra tangalunga Gray, 1832 |
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| Malayan Civet range (dark green - extant, light green - probably extant) |
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The Malayan Civet (Viverra tangalunga), also known as the Oriental Civet, is a civet found on the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Sumatra, Bangka, Borneo, the Rhio Archipelago, and the Philippines.[1]
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The Malay civet was found on the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, Maluku Islands and the Philippines [2][3], where it occurs in a wide variety of habitats including forests, secondary habitats, cultivated land and the outskirts of villages [4]. Other than that, the distribution on hill up to 900m on Gunung Madalan in Sabah and 1100m on Usun Apau and the Kelabit Upland in Sarawak.
Malay civets are nocturnal which means, they active at night from 1800 to 0700. Usually, they are terrestrial but they climb into tree. Despite their cat-like appearance and similar behavior and traits, they are not felines. Their fur may be gray or brown, and may be marked in various patterns. Most of Viverra tangalunga are Carnivores but some of them are solitary, omnivorous and are primarily terrestrial [5]. They feed on others animals including small vertebrate and invertebrate.
Based on The UICN Red List Threatened Species, Malayan Civet or Viverra tangalunga was one of the species that least concern. This is due to the wide distribution and it occurs in a number of protected areas. A result was reported by Syakirah et al. (2000) where, the Malay Civet Viverra tangalunga was found out only in recently logged forest, and not in forest regenerated after logging in the 1970s. From these data, it can be tentatively concluded that arboreal, frugivorous civets are little affected by logging, whereas terrestrial species, that are carnivorous or feed on insects might be negatively impacted by logging. But then a result by Heyden and Bulloh (1996), Colón (1999) found in a two-year study that densities of V. tangalunga, a largely frugivorous species, were 57% higher in an unlogged site than in a logged one; also, fruit comprised a larger proportion of diet in unlogged forest compared to logged forest. This data showed that fruit give a larger percentage of the diet among V. tangalunga in the unlogged forest compared to the logged forest. Meaning that, logging leads to increased competition for fruit, in which V. tangalunga have loses their habitat out to other species. Another possible explanation is that palm civets climb into the trees to eat fruit, while V. tangalunga eats it on the floor.