Jaguar cubs and binturong on Conan

June 6, 2012 • 12:17 pm

This is the squee video for today, but there’s some good biology here, including the fact that the “black panther” is not a distinct species, but simply a color variant of the normally-spotted jaguar (Panthera onca). There are also melanistic (black) variants of the African leopard (Panthera pardus), also called “black panthers.”

Curiously, while the gene for dark color is dominant in jaguars (meaning that only one copy suffices to make the animal black), the melanism allele in leopards is recessive (blackness requires two copies).

The binturong (Arctictis binturong) is a little-known animal, and I remember being entranced the first time I saw one at the zoo. Its nickname, the “bearcat,” fits it perfectly; it looks like the  hybrid offpsring of a cat and a bear. It’s a viverrid, which means it belongs in the family with civets and genets (each having several species), but there’s only one species of the binturong. It lives in southeast Asia, and has a diet consisting largely of fruit but supplemented with leaves, eggs, and small rodents.

Wikipedia says that the binturong is one of only two carnivores that sports a prehensile tail.  Who will be the first reader to name the other species? There’s no prize here, but try to guess without Googling.

h/t: Michael

42 thoughts on “Jaguar cubs and binturong on Conan”

  1. If I’m not mistraken, many (most?) monkeys have prehensile tails and are cheerfully carnivorous (though, granted, also omnivorous). Since the binturong is shown eating fruit, I’ll have to assume that “carnivore” here doesn’t mean exclusive / obligate as is (generally) the case with cats.

    Do I win…?

    b&

    1. Yes, that “carnivore” seemed awfully content with the banana and grapes . . .

      I don’t think that word means what I think it means.

      1. Carnivore refers to their ancient lineage – palm civets show almost no anatomical difference to miacid fossils, the “first” carnivore. They diverged in diet obviously – civets in general have an insanely wide variety of foods they eat, one eats mostly earthworms.

  2. The wiki article must refer to the order Carnivora rather than the dietary habits of species. Which would make the second species the kinkajou. Though, like the binturong, it’s not an obligate carnivore. If I remember correctly both species consume far more plant matter than meat. The kinkajou in particular can be highly frugivorous when fruit is abundant.

  3. I presume you mean belonging to the order Carnivora, rather than based on what they eat. I can’t think of another species with prehensile tails. However, it strikes me that mammals with prehensile tails are common in the New World, but rare in the Old World. Discounting the prehensile tailed NW monkeys, is that still the case?

    1. I looked it up after I posted my guess.

      Jim is asking the right questions, and thinking the right area.

      this one is also the only member of its genus.

    2. Ah, then my possum guess would be wrong below, since it’s a marsupial.

      I have to remember all those Jack Hannah appearances on Johnny Carson’s show.

      Now, of course, I’ll have to go look it up.

      For the rest of you — no cheating!

  4. Only New World monkeys (Platyrrhini) such as spider monkeys and capuchins exhibit prehensile tails.

    The wiki article must be referring to the order Carnivora rather than the dietary habits of individual species. In which case, the second species is the kinkajou. Like the binturong it’s not an obligate carnivore. If I remember correctly, both species consume far more plant matter than animal and the kinkajou in particular can be highly frugivorous when fruit is in season.

    1. If I remember right, cats are the only obligate carnivore in the Order. Civets are in the same Family though, Feliforma. Along with hyenas, mongooses, linsangs and others.

      1. Don’t forget the pinnipeds. Another taxon of obligate carnivores.

        This may be seen as pedantry but it’s a necessary clarification: Feliformia is the Suborder, the species you listed are of different families. Civets and linsangs are of the Viverridae; the cat Family is Felidae; Hyenas are of the Hyenidae; mongooses are within the Herpestidae.

          1. Thanks for the update. I was completely oblivious to the change in status. It would appear that the Asian linsang has indeed been restored to the original linsang family of Prionodontidae.

  5. Opossum would be my guess, but think they are omnivorous. The are indiscriminate eaters with prehensile tails.

  6. I’m with Jim here – I’m virtually certain Jerry means “carnivoran”, not just “critter that eats meat”, so no monkeys or possums =P

    [The answer, btw, is the kinkajou, a Central/South American relative of the raccoon.]

  7. Also, minor inaccuracy – I’m pretty sure jaguars have *the* strongest bite of extant felids, not just one of the strongest.

  9. Isn’t it that cat-looking/dog-looking, dark brown, species that attacks monkeys that live in trees, and has the cool ability with its hind-feet that can dislocate and turn a full 180 in order for it to travel down trees faster?

    I just can never remember the name of that species of mammal…(or is it marsupial?)…

    !!!

  11. Kinkajou? I think they are in the Procyonidae, same family as raccoons.

      1. I’m too late, obviously, but I can add a couple of observations about kinkajous.

        They are amazing leapers, especially for such small animals. I lived for a couple of summers in a hut near the beach in an abandoned coconut grove in Costa Rica. At night there was regular loud crashing up in the trees, initially quite disconcerting, which turned out to be kinajous leaping from tree to tree — apparently creeping out on the fronds of one palm and then jumping across to the outer ends of fronds of the next. I can’t say exactly how far they were flying, but it can hardly have been less than 10 ft or so.

        They’re also really tough fighters. I once saw a female carrying an infant attacked by a troop of capuchin monkeys. The monkeys were apparently intent on eating the youngster — they are aggressive predators on all sorts of small animals. In a prolonged running battle in the treetops the kinkajou fought off the roughly 25 attacking monkeys. After the better part an hour the kinkajou made her escape, with offspring intact.

        I don’t have any clear recollections of kinkajous using their tails for anything but stabilization, but they’re mostly nocturnal and usually I just saw them as glowing eyes and shadowy forms up in the trees in my flashlight beam. The female with the youngster, which I imagine was flushed from a daytime hiding place by the monkeys, was the only one I remember seeing in daylight.

        1. Hang on everyone – use the latin names please! Do you mean the wolverine which IS the Kinkajou, or do you mean Cercoleptes caudivolvulus which is Kinkajou in the OED –

          “< French quincajou (Denys 1672), < North American Indian: compare Algonquin Kwingwaage, Ojibwa gwingwaage, the wolverine. The same word originally as carcajou n., which is still applied to the wolverine; but erroneously transferred by Buffon to the quadruped indicated below. (J. Platt, in N. & Q. 9th s. VII. 386, 18 May 1901.)"

          Or is that the same as the Poto – Poto flavus???

          Clarify please!

          1. OK – it is the same only Potos was the primary name Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier gave it –

            1795:187. Type species

            Viverra caudivolvula Schreber, 1778:453.

            Kinkajou Lacepede, 1799:7. Type species

            Viverra caudivolvula Schreber, 1778:453.

            Caudivolvulus Dumeril, 1806:14. Type species

            “Le Kinkajou.” Cercoleptes Illiger, 1811:127.
            – see Mammalian Species No. 321, Dec. 27, 1988 Potos flavus.

            So even the binomials can be confusing…!

          2. The only kinkajou I know is Potos. There are no wolverines in Costa Rica and I have no clue to what the name Cercoleptes refers. I’ll google it in a minute.

    2. if proxy servers don’t work (they usually do for this kind of thing), you can use an openVPN provider.

      I have had good luck with these guys:

      https://www.privatetunnel.com/

      you can log in to servers in the US or the UK just by changing the login you use, and I have no problems getting Hulu or BBC content here in NZ.

      it costs money, but it’s cheap, and it’s by data used, rather than time, so you can use it at your leisure.

      there are many other advantages to using a VPN system, but I’ll let you look those up.

      🙂

      1. It’s worth keeping in mind that the remote end of a VPN connection can trivially monitor and trace all your traffic.

        If it’s anonymity or privacy you’re after, you want something like Tor.

        Cheers,

        b&

        1. remote end of a VPN connection can trivially monitor and trace all your traffic.

          …to the server, you mean.

          I’ve tested this thoroughly, and no riders other than the tunnel and the data itself make it back to my actual puter from this.

          that’s with and without a firewall in place.

          *shrug*

          1. What I mean is that the server you connect to and the company that matches your VPN activity to your credit card so they can bill you…they can (if they want) know everything about what you do. And, if they want, they can (selectively) log / scrub / not scrub / forward / whatever everything you do…for example, Google could pay them some money on the QT to do no scrubbing for traffic destined to Google servers, or the whole thing could even be a front operation by the NSA / FBI / CIA / other TLA. And you’d never have any way, even in theory, of knowing that that’s what’s going on.

            With Tor, you can have a high degree of confidence that you can’t be traced at the network level; that confidence becomes near-absolute if you run an exit node of your own. Of course, at the application level (or if you type revealing information like your name or credit card number or whatever) it’s an entirely different story…but there are ways to achieve a good level of confidence about that side of things as well.

            b&

  14. Their secret power is that the seeds they deposit have a much higher rate of success than when dropped by primates that eat the same fruits…(okay, that’s a different civet which was the topic of a study but I’m willing to bet figs are the same way).

    I hope WCS’s “cause” is not captive breeding although I get the sense it is. No good making lots and lots of kittens all while their habitat is shrinking, as they already said on the program.

    Short-sighted.

  15. My daughter loves the binturong at the Chicago Brookfield Zoo Fragile Rain Forest.

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