3 ms·
In Praise of Binturongs
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoDidn't know about the critters. Looks like another mustelid (weasel), but seems to behave more like a cat. Not my area of expertise, but they sure are cute.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> Looks like another mustelid (weasel), but seems to behave more like a cat. It's a viverrid, the branch of the cat family (OK, wikipedia has feliforms as a "suborder") that evolved into cat-weasels. Weasels themselves are mustelids, caniforms rather than feliforms. Convergent evolution has produced a weasel body type across multiple taxa of carnivores. (If that's your thing, you might enjoy how the Tasmanian tiger is a marsupial that is, from the head, clearly though incorrectly identifiable as a dog.) Though if you look at the words, "viverrids" means [descendants of] ferrets and "mustelids" means [descendants of] weasels, whereas ferrets themselves are taxonomically mustelids, not viverrids. So the viverrids are incorrectly named.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoCool. Thanks for the clarification!
- EdwardDiego 1y agoA binturong looks like Paddington Bear's cousin who moved onto harder drugs than marmalade, and hasn't had a hit a in a few days, and is doing it hard. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Binturong_in_Overloon.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Binturon...
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI like this picture. You can definitely see the relationship with cats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binturong#/media/File%3ASleeping_well.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binturong#/media/File%3ASleepi...
- dweinus 1y ago> The preceding link contains diagrams of binturong genitalia. This is not a content warning — it is an attempt to convince you to click it.