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Didn'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.
by ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Didn'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!