I'll take my Binturong with extra butter please...
When I think of exotic zoo animals, popcorn rarely comes to mind. But when being educated about the binturong, popcorn was totally on my mind! High in the tree canopy over Southern Asia's tropical forest there lives the only Old World carnivore that uses its tail for climbing. You may recognize it more familiarly as being called the bearcat. This creature is neither bear nor cat, but rather a member of the civet cat clan. Civets are related to cats, but are also cousins to the mongoose and hyena. The bearcat, or binturong(Arctitis binturong), gets its name from a Malaysian language that no longer exists. When you lay eyes upon the binturong, you will understand why so many have confused this creature for what it is not: it has the face and whiskers of a seal, the tail of a monkey, claws of a mongoose, and the thick fuzzy hair and flat feet of a bear. It's no tiny scatting-thing either, this guy weighs in at over forty pounds and reaches six-feet in length (think of a golden retriever that can climb trees using its tail). Even as the binturong spends the majority of its life in the canopy, it tends to move around very slowly, leading some folks to even mistake it as a sloth.
BINTURONG
Poster of a cute Binturong face up close
Source: Poster Edge Design by K9keystrokes
