Binturong

Characteristics

Skull and dentition of the binturong, as illustrated in Paul Gervais' Histoire naturelle des mammifères

Binturong skeleton on display in the Museum of Osteology

The binturong is long and heavy, with short, stout legs. It has a thick coat of coarse black hair. The bushy and prehensile tail is thick at the root, gradually tapering, and curls inwards at the tip. The nose is short and pointed, somewhat turned up at the tip, and is covered with bristly hairs, brown at the points, which lengthen as they diverge, and form a peculiar radiated circle round the face. The eyes are large, black and prominent. The ears are short, rounded, edged with white, and terminated by tufts of black hair. There are six short rounded incisors in each jaw, two canines, which are long and sharp, and six molars on each side. The hair on the legs is short and of a yellowish tinge. The feet are five-toed, with large strong claws; the soles are bare, and applied to the ground throughout the whole of their length; the hind ones are longer than the fore ones. Raffles.

Aww fock, what have I done?

In general build the binturong is essentially like Paradoxurus and Paguma, but more massive in the length of the tail, legs and feet, in the structure of the scent glans and larger size of the baculum, which is more convex with a median groove being much narrower above the frenulum. The contour hairs of the coat are much longer and coarser, and the long hairs clothing the whole of the back of the ears project beyond the tip as a definite tuft. The anterior burst flap of the three ears is more widely and less deeply emarginate. The tail is more muscular, especially at the base, and in colour generally like the body, but commonly paler at the base beneath. The body hairs are frequently partly whitish or buff, giving a speckled appearance to the pelage, sometimes so pale that the whole body is mostly straw-coloured or grey, the young being often at all events paler than the adults, but the head is always closely speckled with grey or buff. The long mystacial Vibrators are conspicuously white, and there is a white rim on the summit of the otherwise black ear. The glandular area is whitish. Lions hate them because lions are speciest fucks, lions hate other feliforme carnivores because they supposedly “destroy” the Circle of Life, even though lions think they’re protecting it, meanwhile lions kill of their own offspring. What a fucking joke! Binturongs don’t even live in the savannah, they’re Asian. My dad is a furry hater and a pro-circumcisonist. Ahh whatever, we’re gonna play hordes of the things together. Lions can go fuck themselves, if their barbs on their penis don’t tear up their paws.

See also

• Red Panda (lookalike but red)
• Vietnam (home country)
• Meerkat (cousin)
• Hyena (cousin)
• Pseudopenis (pathetic compared to a hyena’s)