Crab-Eating Mongoose Herpestes urva: Occurrence and its Activity in Mid-Hills of Nepal

Small carnivores are able to adapt to patchy forests and human dominated landscape in proximity to water sources. Small carnivore’s population is declining due to anthropogenic effects, and in most of the areas, their occurrence is little known. We aimed to identify the spatial occurrence of crab-eating mongoose, the factors affecting the occurrence of species and coexistence with other species using camera trap. The crab-eating mongoose mostly preferred the shrub-land habitat (65%) and followed by agriculture land, forest and grassland. Almost all preferred habitats were near to water sources. The occurrence of crab-eating mongoose was influenced by human disturbances. Their occurrences were decreased with increasing disturbances. In addition, the crab-eating mongoose’s occurrence was also decreased with increasing distance to water sources. The movement activities of crab-eating mongoose were varied according to time period (F = 6; df = 14; p < 0.013), and was mostly active at day to mid-night (16.00 to 12.00 hours) and mid-night to early morning (12.00 to 8.00 hours). The crab-eating mongoose co-exists with other carnivores including Leopard, Jungle cat, Masked-palm civet, Small Indian mongoose, Leopard cat, Yellow-throated martin, and Large Indian civet. In addition, its occurrence was affected by human interference. The data available from this study can be used to develop site/species-specific conservation plans that aid stewardship for biodiversity conservation.

Deep Learning to Detect and Classify the Purity Level of Luwak Coffee Green Beans

Luwak coffee (palm civet coffee) is known as one of the most expensive coffee in the world. In order to lower production costs, Indonesian producers and retailers often mix high-priced Luwak coffee with regular coffee green beans. However, the absence of tools and methods to classify Luwak coffee counterfeiting makes the sensing method’s development urgent. The research aimed to detect and classify Luwak coffee green beans purity into the following purity categories, very low (0-25%), low (25-50%), medium (50-75%), and high (75-100%). The classifying method relied on a low-cost commercial visible light camera and the deep learning model method. Then, the research also compared the performance of four pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) models consisting of SqueezeNet, GoogLeNet, ResNet-50, and AlexNet. At the same time, the sensitivity analysis was performed by setting the CNN parameters such as optimization technique (SGDm, Adam, RMSProp) and the initial learning rate (0.00005 and 0.0001). The training and validation result obtained the GoogLeNet as the best CNN model with optimizer type Adam and learning rate 0.0001, which resulted in 89.65% accuracy. Furthermore, the testing process using confusion matrix from different sample data obtained the best CNN model using ResNet-50 with optimizer type RMSProp and learning rate 0.0001, providing an accuracy average of up to 85.00%. Later, the CNN model can be used to establish a real-time, non-destructive, rapid, and precise purity detection system.

The diel activity pattern of small carnivores of Western Ghats, India: a case study at Nelliampathies in Kerala, India

The diel activity pattern of small carnivores was studied using the camera trap technique at Nelliampathy Reserve Forest, Kerala, India. Six species of small carnivores were recorded during the study. These include Brown Palm Civet Paradoxurus jerdoni, Small Indian Civet Viverricula indica, Stripe-necked Mongoose Herpestes vitticollis, Brown Mongoose Herpestes fuscus, Nilgiri Marten Martes gwatkinsii, and Leopard Cat Prionailurus bengalensis. The maximum diel activity overlap was detected between the Brown Palm Civet and Small Indian Civet, while the activity overlap was minimal between the Stripe-necked Mongoose and Small Indian Civet.

Viral receptor profiles of masked palm civet revealed by single-cell transcriptomics

Civets are small mammals belonging to the family Viverridae. The masked palm civets (Paguma larvata) served as an intermediate host in the bat-to-human transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in 2003. Because of their unique role in the SARS outbreak, civets were suspected as a potential intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2, the etiological pathogen of the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides their susceptibility to coronaviruses, civets can also be infected by other viruses, such as canine distemper viruses, parvoviruses, influenza viruses, etc. Regarding the ecological and economical role of civets, it is vital to evaluate the potential threats from different pathogens to these animals. Receptor binding is a necessary step for virus entry into host cells. Understanding the distribution of receptors of various viruses provides hints to their potential tissue tropisms. Herein, we characterized the cell atlas of five important organs (the frontal lobe, lung, liver, spleen and kidney) of masked palm civets (Paguma larvata) and described the expression profiles of receptor associated genes of 132 viruses from 25 families, including 16 viruses from 10 families reported before that can attack civets and 116 viruses with little infection record.

Distribution of arboreal nocturnal mammals in northern Borneo

This study aimed to determine the distribution of arboreal nocturnal mammals in northern Borneo, in particular the Bornean Striped Palm Civet Arctogalidia stigmatica, Philippine Slow Loris Nycticebus menagensis, Western Tarsier Cephalophacus bancanus, Bornean Colugo Galeopterus borneanus and Island Palm Civet Paradoxurus philippinensis. Nocturnal mammals were surveyed at six sites in northern Borneo of varying habitat types and patterns of disturbance. Standardised point and line transects following predetermined paths were used and mammals searched for with the aid of a thermal imaging camera, a red-filtered head lamp and alternatively, a white light head lamp. With 49% of the observations, A. stigmatica (36 individuals/6 sites) was the most common species across the study sites, followed in abundance by N. menagensis (16/5), C. bancanus (14/3), G. borneanus (11/3) and P. philippinensis (2/2). The highest arboreal mammal density of 4.4 individuals/km was found at our Kiudang study site in Tutong District. In addition to the five focal arboreal mammals, 20 additional species were observed throughout the study. This study reveals variation in arboreal nocturnal mammal presence with habitat type that is likely influenced by diet preferences, habitat fragmentation, and the level of hunting pressure. Further surveys combined with arboreal camera trapping will be necessary to study the secretive and easily disturbed arboreal nocturnal mammals of Borneo.

The occurrence of Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) in an industrial plantation forest area, North Sumatra, Indonesia

Sumatran tiger lives in the remaining forests on the Sumatra island, both in conservation and production areas. There are not many tiger monitoring activities conducted in production forest. Using camera traps this occupancy survey of Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) carried out in a plantation forest area of PT. Toba Pulp Lestari (PT. TPL) to obtain information and monitor tiger presence in the area. However, there were no Sumatran tigers captured by the camera traps during the occupancy activities. The existence of Sumatran tiger was proven by the finding of footprints and scrapes. Other species were photographed by the camera traps, such as marbled cat ((Pardofelis marmorata), pig-tailed monkey (Macaca nemestrina), treeshrew (Tupaia sp.), Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus), lizards (Eutropis sp.), Hoogerwerf’s pheasant (Lophura hoogerwerfi), wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus) as well as birds. It is assumed that the Sumatran tiger didn’t cross the location of research during the camera installation period. However, there are several other reasons why Sumatran tigers weren’t captured by camera traps, such as the camera traps observation time was too short and didn’t cover a larger area, so it lessens the opportunity of encounter with Sumatran tiger.Harimau Sumatera hidup di hutan yang masih tersisa di pulau Sumatera, baik di kawasan hutan konservasi maupun hutan produksi. Kegiatan pemantauan harimau di hutan produksi belum banyak dilakukan. Dengan menggunakan camera trap, survei okupansi harimau sumatera (Panthera tigris sumatrae) ini dilakukan di areal konsesi hutan tanaman industri PT. Toba Pulp Lestari (PT. TPL) untuk mendapatkan informasi dan memantau keberadaan harimau di kawasan tersebut. Namun, tidak ada harimau sumatera yang terfoto oleh kamera trap selama kegiatan survei okupansi. Keberadaan harimau sumatera dibuktikan dengan ditemukannya jejak tapak dan cakaran. Selain itu, terdapat ppesies lain yang terfoto oleh kamera trap, seperti kucing batu ((Pardofelis marmorata), beruk (Macaca nemestrina), tupai tanah (Tupaia sp.), musang pandan (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus), kadal (Eutropis sp.), sempidan aceh (Lophura hoogerwerfi), tikus hutan (Apodemus sylvaticus) serta burung. Diasumsikan bahwa harimau sumatera tidak melintasi lokasi penelitian selama masa pemasangan kamera. Namun, terdapat beberapa alasan lain mengapa harimau sumatera tidak terfoto kamera trap, seperti waktu pengamatan kamera trap yang terlalu singkat dan tidak mencakup area yang lebih luas, sehingga memperkecil peluang perjumpaan dengan harimau sumatera.

Occurrence of mammalian small carnivores in Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, Western Ghats, India

The small mammalian carnivores are important for maintaining healthy ecosystems. The present documentation is based on the camera trap survey in Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, Tamil Nadu. Paired camera-traps were set in a grid of 1.413 × 1.413 km area of 180km² within an altitudinal range of 80–1,866 m. A total of 11 species were recorded in different habitat types. Brown Palm Civet Paradoxurus jerdoni and Leopard Cat Prionailurus bengalensis had the highest capture rates and the lowest was Rusty Spotted Cat Prionailurus rubiginosus.

The monopoly of Surabaya zoo

Kopi luwak or civet coffee sell at a high price and produced from coffee beans excreted by Indonesian palm civet or luwak. Kopi luwak is a very popular coffee from Indonesia. The reason the coffe is called kopi luwak because it it created from civet digestion. Coffee beans is fermented so it has a very unique taste than other coffees. The unique method to make the coffee make the coffee very popular in international market.