Pictures and facts about the Small Indian civet

They are scattered all over most of India, but the Small Indian civet (Viverricula indica) and can also be found in Pakistan, south China, Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. Small Indian civets are like cats in appearance. For one, they have pronounced round ears, the body pelage's color differs. It could be from sand-color to gray-white. Spots are small at the spine area, all its legs are dark but spotted with white patches, its throat/breast areas possess gray-white coloring, and it weighs on the average around 3.4kgs.

The Small Indian civet is nocturnal and solitary. It is arboreal, that is to say, it climbs trees and stay there. However, when hunting, it opts for ground level. The Small Indian civet is basically omnivorous. Its diet consists of lizards, rodents, birds, insects and even eggs. They are polyestrous, and the newborns could be sighted at any time of the year, litter size would range from three to five. Longevity is about 22 years (in captivity).

Let us talk about the trapping of these civets (and its cousins), the trapping success is actually low, in one expert study/experiment done, only 3 of 400 trappings succeeded, for a pitiful rate of 0.75%, and as far as the rate with this civet is concerned, just about .25% turned out OK, and even the Indian Grey Mongoose dished out a .5% profile. (That may be bad news for humans, but that is good for them, I suppose).

To be more specific, a mature male was caught sometime in 1998, weighing at 2.5kgs. It was radio-collared (that means it was set free), and tracked by the experts for months. All of a sudden, the radio stopped working, and they assumed it was a battery failure, we can safely assume that this animal was never found again.

Interesting fact: The sexual maturity is often known in so many animals, but for the Small Indian civet, it is still unknown up to this day...