Owston's Civet

13 May

Chrotogale owstoni

Owston's civet is a cryptic creature from the Annamite Mountains, straddling the border of Vietnam and Laos. With its skinny snout, it sniffs and searches through leaf litter for its favourite food: earthworms.

Oddities of the Annamites

The Annamite Range extends over 1,000 kilometres (>620 mi) through Laos and Vietnam, edging slightly into Cambodia. The moist montane rainforests along its slopes are home to some of the rarest and most cryptic animals on Earth.

You've set up several camera traps, strapping them to trees high and low, to capture the seldom-seen creatures that live in these mountains. As you watch recordings from the previous night — mostly clips of dark rustling bushes animated by the wind — you imagine what you might see. You might record an endangered Annamite striped rabbit, its rusty fur decorated with complex streaks of black, or perhaps a giant muntjac, the largest of the "barking deer" and another Annamite rarity, or, maybe, if you're unimaginably lucky, you might be one of the handful of people to capture a saola, also known as an "Asian unicorn", on film.

You skim through recordings, watching bats and rodents scuttle and twirl across the screen. You pause on one video. Nothing moves in the foreground, but something rustles the bushes in the back. You imagine a long, broad snout emerging from the foliage, a dark brown head finger-painted white, and from its crown, two long tapering horns that merge into a single uni-horn when the creature turns its head to profile. Your eyes fixate on the shaking vegetation, and you watch as, from the bush, springs a lanky, awkward-looking weasel-creature.

It resembles something between a cat and a ferret, although its fur is elaborately patterned with black bands along its back and spots across its legs. The lithe, long-bodied animal makes its way towards the camera, sniffing at the ground and turning over leaf litter with its long, pointed snout. Less than a metre from the camera, it abruptly stops in its path, its rounded ears erect; you can clearly see the vertical streaks on its face, running through its big black eyes. It suddenly stabs its skinny snout beneath the leaves and pulls back with a hefty earthworm in its mouth, slurping it up like a living noodle. Slinking onwards, it sweeps its fuzzy black tail past the camera before disappearing into the forest and the night. You may not have found a unicorn, but you did capture another elusive and little-known Annamite critter.

Owston's Civet

More specifically, you captured a civet — a cat-dog-weasel creature from the family Viverridae. Most specifically, an Owston's civet (Chrotogale owstoni), named for Alan Owston, a collector of Asian wildlife, from whose specimen the species was first described. Measuring some 50 centimetres (1.6 ft) long, plus a tail nearly as lengthy, and weighing 2–3 kilograms (4.4–6.6 lb), Owston's civet isn't a particularly large carnivoran — that is, a member of the mammalian order Carnivora. It is a meat-eater, after a fashion, although it's also known to snack on soft fruits. Most of the meat in its diet comes in the form of crunchy insects and slimy earthworms, the latter being a particular favourite. This dietary preference might explain its geographical distribution, particularly why it favours humid and wet forests (they've got lots of earthworms).

Alan Owston collected his civet specimen near a river in the northern region of Vietnam, but exactly how far the species extends today isn't known due to a scarcity of sightings. Owston's civet is nocturnal and largely solitary. It spends most of its time on the forest floor, but it's also known to be a good climber and will take to the trees to travel, groom, or rest. Much else about this little-studied civet is extrapolated from our knowledge of its more common relatives.¹

Piecing Together a Life History

If you know two things about civets, the first is that their poop is used for coffee, and the second is that their musky secretions were used in perfumes.² Civets are famously smelly animals. Their musk comes from scent glands on the underbelly and the perineal area — between the genitals and the anus — and civets use their scent the for the same purpose most 17th century Europeans did: to attract a mate.

How large is the territory of an Owston's civet? We don't know. But the closely related Asian palm civet wanders an average territory of 55 hectares (136 acres), and Owston's is likely in the same ballpark. As a civet wanders its patch of forest, it marks various surfaces with urine and musk, doing so most frequently during its breeding season. Female Owston's civets have been observed going into estrus (becoming sexually receptive) anywhere between January and November. Do they spend their year in constant sexual pursuit and then take a month of abstinence at the end? Another close relative, the masked palm civet, is polyestrous; females can go into heat multiple times a year. That might be the case in Owston's as well, although we have no definitive evidence.

There's no doubt that you can learn a lot about an animal by observing it in captivity. There's also no doubt that a captive setting is different from an animal's natural habitat, invariably resulting in behavioural differences. We don't know much about the mating habits of wild Owston's civets, but, in captivity, they appear to be polygynous — one male mates with several females. Can we be sure this mating system carries over to their natural habitats? Other civets are nearly as cryptic as Owston's when it comes to reproduction, but one species, the masked palm civet, is known to be promiscuous in the wild — both males and females mate with multiple partners. Perhaps Owston's civet is induced to polygyny in captivity by a skewed sex ratio or the inability to wander off and find other mates, whereas in the wild it would be free to practice promiscuity. As of now, we simply don't know.

We do know that the coupling of two Owston's civets is passionate and swift — sex lasts only 2 to 3 minutes. Around 80 days later, the female gives birth to a litter of 1 to 3 offspring (sadly, in every observed case of triplets, one always dies). Most of the care comes from the mother, who grooms, feeds, and, showing exactly how dedicated she is, eats her child's faeces — the father will sometimes groom his children, assumedly with an air of disinterest. Newborns are blind and helpless, each weighing about 88 grams (3 oz), or lighter than your smartphone. They don't stay helpless for long, however; by ten days they're already walking, by 12 to 18 weeks they're weaned off their mother's milk, and by 18 to 24 months they're ready to have kids of their own.

How long will they live? In the wild, we don't know. Other civets, like the African civet, can live for as long as 15–20 years. One Owston's civet supposedly lived for 11 years after its capture, although it didn't come with a birth certificate. Another lived for 17 and a half years in captivity, passing away in 2023 at Newquay Zoo in England. The name of this long-lived civet was Bao, and he was part of a breeding programme to help save his species from extinction.

Search, Study, Save

Owston's civet is considered an 'endangered' species by the IUCN. How many are left? You might've guessed the answer: we don't know. But the trend is certainly one of decline. In addition to the habitat loss that most tropical animals face, Owston's civet faces guns, snares, and hunting dogs. The species is hunted for its meat — often captured in meat traps due to its ground-dwelling habits — as well as its bones, scent glands, and penis, which are all used in traditional medicines. And, not only is it killed for potions with no proven healing properties, it's also hunted because its fur — mesmerisingly stripped and spotted — looks nice on a wall. It's probably accurate to say that a great many more Owston's civets have been caught and killed than have been recorded on film.

Many countries, like the US, have banned the importation of civet products, not as a policy to protect the animals themselves, but because civets were determined to be a natural reservoir for the SARS virus. Regardless of the reason, a smaller market for wild animal products is a positive. Unfortunately, the market still exists. Three Owston's civets were found in civet coffee facilities in Da Lat, Vietnam, in 2018, while two males were advertised online as pets in the same year. The latter two were confiscated by Save Vietnam Wildlife, the same non-profit organisation that sent Bao to Newquay Zoo in 2014 to participate in the European Owston's civet breeding programme. After Bao's passing in 2023, the programme was comprised of only 10 individuals spread across four European zoos, but with the success the programme has so far seen (Bao himself fathered three offspring while he was at Newquay Zoo), that number will hopefully increase. Save Vietnam Wildlife reports that it has successfully bred 66 civets for conservation. (If you want, and are able to assist their cause, you can donate here or “adopt” one here!)

The wild population, straddling the mountainous border between Vietnam and Laos, is still under threat. To protect a species — to create an effective conservation plan — requires in-depth knowledge of its habitat, behaviour, and life history. And the only way to learn anything definitive about a species is to meet it, unobtrusively, in its own habitat. In the case of Owston's civet, that means trekking through wet forests and setting up camera traps to capture snippets of this spindly worm-slurper. Hopefully, after a few more years of study and observation, this page on Owston's civet that you're now reading — comprised of scant information and cobbled-together facts from better-studied civet species — will be obsolete, because we'll have a comprehensive factfile on this cryptic oddity of the Annamites and a confident plan to prevent its extinction.

¹ Over 35 species make up the family Viverridae — these are the civets, genets, oyans, and the binturong. The most common and well-known species are the masked and Asian palm civets, which share a similar range across South and Southeast Asia. These are somewhat close relatives of Owston's civet (which is also sometimes called Owston's palm civet), although they belong to different genera.

Owston's civet is the sole species in the genus Chrotogale. It's closest living relatives are the banded palm civet and Hose's palm civet, both of which share its skinny, slinky-like appearance; the Sulawesi palm civet, a bulkier civet with dark-rufous fur from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi; and, perhaps the oddest of all civets, the otter civet, which does indeed look like the hybrid of an otter and civet, with its wide snout and webbed feet. All these aforementioned civets are the lone representatives of their genera.

In Sub-saharan Africa, you'll find the African civet: a larger, more terrestrial species, whose appearance has aspects of skunk and hyena mixed in to make it even more of a mammalian chimaera.

A banded palm civet (*Hemigalus derbyanus*).

A Sulawesi civet (*Macrogalidia musschenbroekii*).

² Civet coffee, or Kopi luwak, is made from partially digested coffee cherries — those that have passed through the system of, usually, an Asian palm civet. The increase in its popularity has led to a rise in "civet farms", where wild civets are kept in awful conditions akin to those of battery hens. The coffee has been variously described as earthy, nutty and rich, as well as thin and simply just bad.

The use of civet musk for perfume has old historic roots in Africa and the Middle East, and less old roots in Europe (introduced in the 16th century). The substance obtained from civet scent glands — from various species including the African civet, large Indian civet, and small Indian civet — is simply known as "civet", while the process of extracting is called "civeting". This musk, if smelled right after it was "civeted", apparently smells faecal and can, quote, "explode in the nose". Only when diluted and combined with more pleasant fragrances does it become a desirable scent. The same problems hold for civet perfume as they do for civet coffee, namely, wild animals being kept in cruel conditions and exploited. Sensibly, in my opinion, scents derived from animals are now illegal in most places — effectively replaced by synthesised fragrances.

**Where Does It Live?**

⛰️ Primary and secondary evergreen forests near rivers.
📍 Annamite mountains; in Vietnam, Laos and southern China.

‘Endangered’ as of 03 March, 2015.

IUCN

Size // Medium
Length // 50 cm (1.6 ft) + a tail nearly as long
Weight // 2–3 kilograms (4.4–6.6 lb)
Activity: Nocturnal 🌙
Lifestyle: Mostly Solitary 👤
Lifespan: Up to 17.5 years (in captivity)
Diet: Omnivore
Favourite Food: Earthworms 𓆙
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Viverridae
Genus: Chrotogale
Species: C. owstoni

Owston's civet (Chrotogale owstoni) is named for Alan Owston, a collector of Asian wildlife from whose specimen the species was first described more than 100 years ago.

This civet lives across the Annamite mountains: in Vietnam, Laos and southern China. But exactly how far the species ranges today isn't known, largely thanks to its cryptic nature — being nocturnal and largely solitary.

The little we know of this species comes from camera trap footage, individuals in captivity, or extrapolated information from better-known relatives.

It spends most of its time on the forest floor, but it's also known to be a good climber, taking to the trees to travel, groom, or rest.

Female Owston's civets have been observed going into estrus (becoming sexually receptive) anywhere between January and November. Like the closely related masked palm civet, Owston's civet may be polyestrous — with females able to go into heat multiple times a year.

Owston's civet sex lasts only 2 to 3 minutes. Around 80 days later, the female gives birth to a litter of 1 to 3 offspring (sadly, in every observed case of triplets, one always dies).

The mother grooms, feeds, and, showing exactly how dedicated she is, eats her child's faeces. The father will sometimes groom his children.

The pups — born blind and helpless, each weighing about 88 grams (3 oz) — don't stay helpless for long. By ten days, they're already walking, by 12 to 18 weeks, they're weaned off their mother's milk, and by 18 to 24 months, they're ready to have kids of their own.

Owston's civet is considered an 'endangered' species by the IUCN, but we don't know how many are left in the wild.

The species is threatened by hunting for its meat, its parts (for traditional "medicine"), and its fur. This endangered civet has also been sold as a pet online and found in civet coffee facilities.

A captive breeding program and efforts to learn more about this species in the wild provide some hope for keeping this skinny, worm-slurping civet alive.