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habitat in the middle of Delhi, though
not before the mother had bitten me as
I tried to ‘recapture her for release’.
A few years down the line I found
myself still ‘rescuing’ civets in places I
least expected to fi nd them: bustling
human habitations. On each occasion
I felt that the civets themselves were
very comfortable in human-modifi ed
landscapes, but people were not willing
to coexist with a wild animal. While
working towards my Master’s degree
studying urban snakes, I came across
the concept of synanthropisation/
synurbisation: the adaptation of
wildlife to urban development. Foxes
in London, Peregrine Falcons in North
America and Germany, and stone
martens in North America suddenly
seemed relevant: all species that
have successfully established thriving
populations in completely urban
habitats. Were civets adapting similarly,
since one was more likely to fi nd a
common palm civet in urban human-
use areas than pristine forests? Were
they exhibiting synurbisation as well?
DANCING ON THE CEILING
Cut to June 2017. I was in Baripada,
Odisha, at the Similipal Tiger Reserve
headquarters, for meetings related to
the Mobile Veterinary Service (MVS)
unit established by Wildlife Trust of
India (WTI) in 2014. During my visit we
were called in to assist a government
offi cial who claimed he was having
problems with animals creating a
racket on his ceiling.
His house was huge; an old
construction nestled in a mango
orchard. Looking at the house’s false
ceiling and the human-created forest
I had an intuition that it was the ideal
habitat for palm civets. My suspicions
were confi rmed when we were shown
a video of a civet mother and fi ve
pups climbing out of the skylight. What
piqued our interest though was that
they looked quite unusual: white with
faint dark markings.
We know about body colour
aberrations in wildlife. From Odisha
itself there have been recent records
of melanistic tigers (with more distinct
dark stripes than usual) and albino
snakes (completely pale with discoloured
eyes). These civets looked leucistic:
partially white and partially black, mini
versions of the giant panda! Dipping
into historical records, I later found that
there was a description of a separate
race of civets in Odisha, Paradoxurus
hermaphroditus nictitans (Taylor, 1891),
which resembled a leucistic variety.
Whatever their race, our training
dictated that they be left alone; there
was no need to capture and move them.
But while I had acquired that knowledge
over my eight years of work in wildlife
conservation, the reluctance of people
to coexist with wild creatures persisted.
We were unable to fi nd anybody to
break through the false ceiling at the
time, but that night we received a
call that the animals had been seen
emerging from their hideout and we
needed to remove them.
During the capture attempt the
mother and two kittens escaped, leaving
behind three young ones. Three civet
kittens rescued in similar circumstances
were already being hand-raised at
the MVS fi eld station since April, and
we took the call to rehabilitate (in the
correct sense this time) all six kittens
together. We chose a wooded patch
with plenty of fruiting trees near the
fi eld station, which itself lies at the edge
of the Similipal Tiger Reserve. The MVS
veterinarian and I (being careful not to
get bitten this time) examined the six
kittens, sexed them (four females and
two males) and weighed them. We also
noted identifying marks to assist in
post-release monitoring.The ‘soft release’ protocol that we
follow for small carnivores requires us
to help animals develop a fi delity to
their release site by holding them in
a suitable enclosure for an extended
period of time. Accordingly, the six
civets were placed in two cages of
around 1.2x0.9x0.9 m. on a platform
1.5 m. above the ground. We fed them
in the evenings and early mornings –
they loved mangoes, which perhaps
reminded them of the food their
mother used to bring them in their
orchard home. Four weeks later, the
gates were opened and they were
allowed to explore their surroundings:
soft release. The team monitored them
through camera traps and noticed that
at least three were returning to the
cage even two months later, indicating
that the method for developing site
fi delity had worked and they had in
fact been rehabilitated.
Civets are probably exemplars of
the Darwinian ‘survival of the fi ttest’,
given their adaptability to disturbed
environs. I continue to be impressed
and enthralled by their
ability to thrive in a
world that is becoming
increasingly diffi cult to
live in, even for
us humans! oThe three leucistic civets hand-raised by the Wildlife Trust of India's MVS unit in the Similipal Tiger
Reserve earlier this year.ABHISHEK NARAYANAN/WTIThe author is Divisional Head – Wild
Rescue and Rehabilitation, Wildlife Trust
of India.