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Description

The order Carnivora is divided into two suborders; the feliforms; the cats and their close relatives, and the caniforms; the dogs and their close relatives. All the animals shown here are feliforms and more closely related to cats than to dogs. The feliform suborder includes several families living and extinct, the cats, the hyenas, the saber tooth-like nimravids, the mongooses, the civets and genets, and the Malagasy carnivores. Hyenas may look and behave like canines, but their similarities are due to convergent evolution and they are not close relatives. They occur today in Africa and Asia and along with the big cats are powerful and important predators and scavengers, although one member; the aardwolf, is specialized for feeding on termites instead of large animals. As large predators they may come into conflict with humans but are generally seen as lowly pests, but are actually very intelligent and social animals. Mongooses come in 32 species throughout Africa and Asia and are generally small with elongated bodies and short legs. Most species feed on insects and small animals with fruits included in the diets of some species. On some islands mongooses have become invasive species after being introduced by humans, often in an attempt to control other invasive species like rats. The viverrids; the civets and genets, are found in Asia and Africa and are somewhat more cat-like than other feliforms, with retractable claws, long(sometimes prehensile) tails and arboreal lifestyles, although unlike cats most are omnivores. In Asia some civet species are used in the production of Kopi Luwak coffee, which is made from coffee cherry beans that have been eaten and passed through the digestive tract of civets. Collection of these beans originally took place in the wild from the dung of wild civets, but recently civets have been farmed and feed coffee cherries to produce coffee, often inhumanely. The eupleridae, or Malagasy carnivores, are all endemic to the island of Madagascar and are the only native mammalian predators, with the cougar-like fossa being an important predator of lemurs. Like the lemurs members of this family are endangered due to deforestation of the island. The nimravids were a family of carnivores that lived from the Eocene to the Miocene, existing for roughly 30 million years, and looked like and filled the niches that cats to today. Many species had saber-teeth, giving the group the name "false saber-tooths".

Species shown:
Binturong/ Arctictis binturong
Common Genet/ Genetta genetta
Indian grey mongoose/ Herpestes edwardsii
Spotted hyena/ Crocuta crocuta
Ring-tailed mongoose/ Galidia elegans
Meerkat/ Suricata suricatta
†Wounding false saber/ †Eusmilus bidentatus
Masked palm civet/ Paguma larvata
Aardwolf/ Proteles cristata
Fossa/ Cryptoprocta ferox

Description

The order Carnivora is divided into two suborders; the feliforms; the cats and their close relatives, and the caniforms; the dogs and their close relatives. All the animals shown here are feliforms and more closely related to cats than to dogs. The feliform suborder includes several families living and extinct, the cats, the hyenas, the saber tooth-like nimravids, the mongooses, the civets and genets, and the Malagasy carnivores. Hyenas may look and behave like canines, but their similarities are due to convergent evolution and they are not close relatives. They occur today in Africa and Asia and along with the big cats are powerful and important predators and scavengers, although one member; the aardwolf, is specialized for feeding on termites instead of large animals. As large predators they may come into conflict with humans but are generally seen as lowly pests, but are actually very intelligent and social animals. Mongooses come in 32 species throughout Africa and Asia and are generally small with elongated bodies and short legs. Most species feed on insects and small animals with fruits included in the diets of some species. On some islands mongooses have become invasive species after being introduced by humans, often in an attempt to control other invasive species like rats. The viverrids; the civets and genets, are found in Asia and Africa and are somewhat more cat-like than other feliforms, with retractable claws, long(sometimes prehensile) tails and arboreal lifestyles, although unlike cats most are omnivores. In Asia some civet species are used in the production of Kopi Luwak coffee, which is made from coffee cherry beans that have been eaten and passed through the digestive tract of civets. Collection of these beans originally took place in the wild from the dung of wild civets, but recently civets have been farmed and feed coffee cherries to produce coffee, often inhumanely. The eupleridae, or Malagasy carnivores, are all endemic to the island of Madagascar and are the only native mammalian predators, with the cougar-like fossa being an important predator of lemurs. Like the lemurs members of this family are endangered due to deforestation of the island. The nimravids were a family of carnivores that lived from the Eocene to the Miocene, existing for roughly 30 million years, and looked like and filled the niches that cats to today. Many species had saber-teeth, giving the group the name "false saber-tooths".

Species shown:
Binturong/ Arctictis binturong
Common Genet/ Genetta genetta
Indian grey mongoose/ Herpestes edwardsii
Spotted hyena/ Crocuta crocuta
Ring-tailed mongoose/ Galidia elegans
Meerkat/ Suricata suricatta
†Wounding false saber/ †Eusmilus bidentatus
Masked palm civet/ Paguma larvata
Aardwolf/ Proteles cristata
Fossa/ Cryptoprocta ferox