Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, which is why I
wanted to revisit our friends the moles today – but then I came across a
mention of a Madagascar cat, and it stuck.
What is a Madagascar cat? Technically, it is an incorrect name for the fossa, (also
known as fosa), which does belong, technically speaking to the same suborder of
the carnivorous mammals’ family as the true cats do, but otherwise? It belongs
to the mammal family Eupleridae,
which is more closely related to the mongooses instead.
Why the fossa is called a Madagascar cat? It is
superficially similar to a cat, but only that. You may see it, for example, on
Sir David Attenborough’s ‘Life of Mammals’, where the fossas are shown mating
and hunting lemurs on Madagascar – until humans had arrived on that island and
introduced their animal companions as well, the fossa was the biggest
carnivorous mammal in that ecosystem. Being the size of a small mountain lion,
(about 70-80 cm long), and weighing about from 5.5 to 8.5 kg, it is a
formidable-looking mammal, but only that; the real puma itself isn’t very
dangerous to humans, and the fossa actually avoids humans (and their dogs) for
as long as possible; yes, it hunts lemurs, which are fellow primates to the
human beings, but the modern lemurs are very different primates from the modern
humans, so there’s that.
Anything else? First, unlike the true cats, a fossa’s claws
are only semi-retractable – i.e., they can extend, but cannot fully retract
back into the paws. Secondly, while the fossa itself belongs to the genus Cryptoprocta, (it is a monotypic genus that
consists only of the fossa itself), the term ‘fossa’ is also used in the
scientific world as the title of another monotypic genus, a genus that consists
of only the relative of the ‘true’ fossa – Fossa
fossana, known in the English language as the Malagasy civet, also known as
the fanaloca.
At 47-50 cm in length, (plus another 20 cm to the tail), and
at 1.5-2.0 kg in weight, it is a much smaller animal than the ‘true’ fossa is,
and physically it resembles the ‘true’ civets & genets of Africa and
Eurasia. For a while, it was even classified with the banded (palm) civet of
South-East Asia, until it was discovered that it was more closely related to
the carnivorous mammals of the Eupleridae
family, see above. At about the size of a small fox, (and with a similar
behavior), it is the second largest native carnivorous mammal of Madagascar.
Both the fossa and the Malagasy civet are considered to be Vulnerable,
(according to IUCN), both because of human (and dog) harassment, and habitat
deterioration on Madagascar. Of course, that affects all of Madagascar’s
wildlife, including its’ native carnivores of the Eupleridae family, which consists of two subfamilies: one that
contains the fossa, the Malagasy civet, and two species of the so-called
falanoucs, and the second that contains their cousins – the various species of
mongooses and vontsiras of Madagascar. Despite the fact that their common name
of some of them contains the word ‘mongoose’, these Madagascan mammals are
proportionally more closely related to the fossa and the Malagasy civet, than
to the ‘true’ mongooses of Africa and Eurasia. Anything else?
Sadly, no. The second subfamily of the native Madagascan carnivores
may be more numerous out of the two, but its’ members are much less ‘charismatic’
than the fossa, the Malagasy civet, and the falanoucs are. Consequently, less
is known about them, than, say, about the fossa itself – sadly, the small
carnivores are not very popular unlike the large ones… That is real life. It
sucks.
…Well, this is it for now, though. Discussing the fossa and
its’ relatives was fun; maybe we should do something similar soon. See you
later!
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