As most of you guessed, this species is a binturong.
It is also known as a “bear-cat.”
The bear-cat is the University of Cincinnati’s mascot.
It is also one of two species in the order Carnivora with a prehensile tail.
The other is the kinkajou.
Kinkajous are procyonids, which is the raccoon family. These are caniform carnivores, which also includes bears and domestic dogs, as well as skunks and stink badgers, the red panad, and the weasels.
Binturongs are viverrids . This family includes civets and genets, some of which look like the large weasels, like the martens and fishers. However, this is a feliform family. These species are related to cats, hyenas, and mongooses, as well as the Malagasy carnivores, such as the fossa. (The African palm civet is in its own family.)
Binturongs smell like corn chips, which is one of their weird characteristics.
So the bear-cats are actually more related to cats than to bears.
“Smell like corn chips” — I’m not going to get that close, especially since I actually know what civet smells like!
I seriously dislike most weaselly animals, except otters. Here in Vermont we’ve seen the latter, as well as ‘fisher cats’ and ermine.
On the other hand, I don’t mind raccoons if they stay out of my garage, and I like koatimundi.
We have ermine and fisher now in West Virginia. It’s just ours aren’t the same species of ermine as yours our. They are sometimes called long-tailed weasels. We traded wild turkeys to New Hampshire and got fishers in return. We could stand to have the marten reintroduced as well, and we once had porcupines in the highest mountains. Fishers are a major predator of porcupines, and they are a larger species in the marten family.
What is called a civet in parts of the US is actually a spotted skunk. I have relatives in North Carolina, who hear lots about civets, only to find out they were talking about spotted skunks.
The actual civets do produce a musky smell as well, but in the binturong’s case, the musk is corn chip or popcorn flavored.
That term fisher is a misnomer. They don’t fish at all. They are squirrel and porcupine hunters.
Farley Mowat in Sea of Slaughter argues that they got this name because the fisher is really similar to the extinct sea mink of the Maritimes and New England coast. The sea mink was a bigger mink than the more common American mink and a lighter color. Thus, early explorers called it a “sea marten” or a “fisher marten.” When they encountered the fisher of the forest, they confused the two species, and the big forest marten became the fisher because they thought they were the same species. The earliest account of sea mink comes from an early explorer who called them a “fish shaped like a greyhound,” which in the old days makes sense. All animals of the sea were called fishes.
I’ve only seen one fisher in my lifetime. They aren’t that common this far south. The American marten, a relative, also once lived here, but I think they are almost entirely extinct from all of eastern North America.
[…] fact, there are only two members of the order Carnivora that have prehensile tails. The other is the binturong or bear cat, which a type of civet that is also known for smelling like popcorn. No one would mistake this […]