English Task | All About Binturong (Also known as Bearcat)

Bearcat ( Binturong )

      Hello my loyal audience!, in today's window of opportunity i as the writer of this blog want to describe to you about one of a living thing that has 1 special quirks and uniqueness which is Bearcat. 

      Do you realize that out of 3 photos above there are some kind of a similarity between them?

      If you do, it's fine you are not wrong. 

      Bearcat (also known as Binturong) is a medium sized mammal that has simillarities to a Bear and also a Cat ( hence it's called Bearcat), but it has nothing related to both creature. Instead bearcats are civet (small carnivorous mammals). Binturongs live high in the trees of forests in South east Asia

Taxonomy
Kingdom – Animalia
Phylum – Chordata
Class – Mammalia
Order – Carnivora
Family – Viverridae
Subfamily – Paradoxurinae
Genus – Arctictis
Species – binturong

Description of Bearcats's body

      Bearcats are the largest species in the Viverridae family that have long body measuring around 61 to 96cm in length with a tail that's 56 to 89cm long and heavy bodies weighing 9 to 20 kg, they have short and stocky legs. They have short and also pointed snouts that has more teeth than the majority of carnivores around the world. They also have many thick and sensitive white whiskers that's useful to detect a possible food source. They have long and coarse coats which helps to keep bearcats themselves dry, the majority area of the coats is dark brown to black in color but it's tipped with gray. They display comfort behaviour such as grooming their own fur themselves 

      The color of their faces are usually paler than it's other body parts. Bearcats have short ear but small, rounded, edged with white. The eyes are reddish-brown that give them kind of an attractive look, but females are 20 percent larger that makes them heavier than males, which makes bearcats a sexually dimorphic species when they reached maturity. They have claws that are sharp but they rarely use it to hurt people. They have a distinctive smell of a Buttered Popcorn from their glands under it's tail

Bearcats's price

      They are also desired as pets, at the USA's exotic pet trade in 1998 they had a whopping value of around 1500$-2500$. In these days in some of the sites that i've found they are sold for around 1000$-2000$ but there are also someone who sold it for around 5000$-7000$

      There's one unique feature that Bearcats have which is it's tail. What makes it unique? people nicknamed the tail bearcats's "5th leg" because their thick and long tail can be used to hold on to branchs or twigs ( prehensile tail )

Habitat

      Bearcats live around the area of South-East Asia. In Indonesia Binturong/ bearcats can be found at several locations, such as : Pulau Jawa, Sumatera, Nias, Riau, dan Bangka, and some areas in Kalimantan. They require thick vegetation, either in the trees or on the ground. They live in tall, dense tropical forests and spend most of their time in trees and sometimes they even sleep in the branches, they can live up to 10-15 years in captivity and less in the wild.

Foods

      Bearcats mostly eat fruits even tho they are classified as carnivorous, they supplement it by hunting and eating small mammals, birds, insects, fish, and also eggs.

Their Role in the Ecosystem

      They are oftenly called as the key species in the ecosystem because of their ability to spread grains of ara fruit that gave crucial effect in the ecosystem. They are also in charged of controlling the population of animals that they hunt.

The reason they are classified as a conserved animal

      Bearcats's population are decreasing as Dayak tribe use it as one of their food source, they are also hunted for their meat, skin, and in the chinese medicine market bearcats have body parts that they used. Other than that they are threatened by habitat loss, mostly due to deforestation for agriculture in the southern parts of bearcats natural distribution, and also because human settlement is increasing and that's why Bearcats are one of the Viverridae that's conserved

      Bearcats are mostly solitary and tend to evade each other, but they aren't strictly territorial. They mark their territory with scent glands from under it's tail. They are arboreal which means that they mostly climb however they are not very agile but sometimes they are good swimming and also diving in order to obtain food.
Bearcats's pace when moving is around 1,5 m/s.


      Cool right! that's all that i can describe to you about Bearcats or Binturong, i hope i've educated you guys a bit about Bearcats. They are also kinda cute in my opinion, take a look at this Bearcat smiling 😃

Thank you for all of you who've paid attention from the beginning till the end 

sources : https://animals.net/binturong/
               https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Arctictis_binturong/
               https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binturung
               https://projectorangutan.com/animals/binturong/

https://gardaanimalia.com/binturong-musang-besar-yang-menjadi-spesies-kunci-ekosistem/

Powerpoint : https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16_61y6Kjaf9U7yogUILIA170rIZJKjvVJOrGI0OKYIg/edit#slide=id.p10