Nepal is home to over 200 species of mammals which is incredible considering its tiny size compared to neighbors in north and south – India and China. These mammals include mice, rats, squirrels, bats, deer, cats and dogs. However most of us have virtually no information on most of these species. Working on wildlife for years has led me to tell you about wildlife that live around us.
Today I want to let you know about one of the common yet very little known wildlife found in Nepal, the large Indian civet known as Thulo Nirbiralo in Nepali. Many would say why Indian when it is also found in Nepal and other countries. It is interesting how the names of wildlife are given. The newly discovered species are mostly named after the locality or the country where the first specimen was collected. For example. Nepal wren babbler was first recorded for science in Nepal in 1991 (Martens and Eck 1991) but is also found in India. This is especially true if the name of the locality or country is mentioned in its scientific name such as Acanthoptila nipalensis. Confused? It is the scientific name for the well-known spiny babbler or Kaade bhyaakur which is one of the endemic bird species of Nepal.
Let’s not play with the names for now and keep our discussion about large Indian civet’s current name and its etymology aside because it is a matter of very little concern. We should better know about the animal and its ecology.
Large Indian civet is a small carnivore species belonging to family Viverridae which is a family of small to medium-sized mammals. It is primarily a nocturnal animal meaning it carries out its activity mostly during night. A study in Annapurna Conservation Area in 2017 photographed this mammal 97 times all of which was between 18:00 hrs to 06:00 hrs. Large Indian Civet is considered a mid-altitude species with the highest record being at around 2750 meters. The species is classified as Near Threatened both globally and nationally in the IUCN Red List of threatened species.
Large Indian Civet is a poultry carrier in many places. The efficiency of its poultry taking can be understood from the fact that people often blame yellow-throated marten, known as Malsaanpro in Nepali, for running away with chicken in villages. This could be probably because large Indian civet mostly does its job during night while yellow-throated marten gets active during the afternoon and gets spotted majority of times. I came across a famous hunter who was known far and wide because of his hunting skills during one of our research works. I was sharing the photos of the animals which were captured by our camera traps and large Indian civet was also one of them. This hunter I was working with had zero idea about the species and he was unsure of the species in the photo. Interesting? This could be because it is strictly nocturnal and thus people seldom encounter this species while venturing in the forests.
An interesting incident recently took place in Chapagaun area of Lalitpur district related to the large Indian civet. A poor large Indian civet individual was captured alive near Chapagaon. As usual there was a crowd of hundreds speculating which animal could this creature be? And some pseudo wildlife biologists got a fertile ground to put forward their strangest opinions of what species it could be. Some said clouded leopard, some red panda and some little tiger! Everybody had opinion even when no one from the crowd had seen it prior to that day. The poor animal was captured by officials from Division Forest Office with help of local police and released in the nearby forest. I was relieved that after all it was released back to safety, probably and the matter was also closed.
Next day I checked my facebook wall before starting to work and found some stupid but funny stories had already been cooking in the internet since the previous night. A journalist had already published the incident as an online news. Publishing as a news to inform people is a novel initiative but he went a step ahead and made a hypothesis out of it. His news made a headline among wildlife biologists in the country. According to him the creature was similar to a mouse in appearance but was bigger in size. He further wrote that it also looked like a raccoon but was different in many ways. He went another step further saying Darwin’s theory of natural selection is working based on that incident. To minimize the confusion, conservationist Raju Acharya wrote an article after some time refuting the claims that have been made in that online news article.
Possessing knowledge on elusive species like large Indian civet is difficult. However it is also important that we keep tab on the information of wildlife living around us. Currently the level of awareness of general people on the issues surrounding wildlife and biodiversity of the country is quite low. I am hopeful that this column will go a long way to improve that.