Otter civet

The carnivore

Otter civet is a carnivore in the family Viverridae (order Carnivora) — Cynogale bennettii.

Range and habitat

Otter civets are distributed in Sumatra, Borneo and peninsular Thailand. Lowland primary forest is apparently the ideal habitat for the species, although it is also known to occur in secondary forest. Between July 2008 and January 2009, ten otter civets were photographed in an area of about 112 km2 (43 sq mi) in Sabah's Deramakot Forest Reserve, a lowland tropical rainforest in Borneo ranging in altitude from 60–250 m (200–820 ft).

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet

The otter civet is a nocturnal species that obtains most of its food from the water, feeding on fish, crabs and freshwater mollusks. It can also climb to feed on birds and fruit.

The otter civet is a semiaquatic viverrid native to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.

In crisis

It is believed to be undergoing severe population decline due to habitat destruction and is classified as an endangered species by the IUCN Red List. The otter civet is threatened by habitat destruction – specifically, the destruction of peat swamp forests to make way for oil palm plantations.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Otter civet is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Otter civet, Wikidata item Q541053. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.