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The
Binturong Information Sheet
by
Mindy Stinner
Conservators' Center, Inc.
http://www.conservatorscenter.org
According to the International Species Information System (ISIS),
the number of facilities registering breeding of binturongs
worldwide number around 55 (1995, http://www.worldzoo.org).
It is very difficult to find written publications on binturongs
so the remainder of this is text is based on my observations of
one group of 58 animals at the Carnivore Preservation Trust (CPT)
in Pittsboro, NC, and two other individual binturongs kept, one
as a resident of a private educational zoo in the NC mountains,
and one in another small zoo. Some information has also
been passed on to me by knowledgeable people who have helped me
along the way.
Binturongs have an expected life span of 10-15 years in
captivity, less in the wild. I have known binturongs of age
23 or older to be flourishing in captivity. They are
endangered in large part because rainforest locals in Southeast
Asia, who used to hunt them only for food, have found an
ever-increasing profit in selling them to those who promote the
Chinese medicine trade. Their penis bones, ingested as a
powder or cooked into food, are said to help men stay virile and
to help produce male children. Also threatening to them is
a loss of habitat due to deforestation. At the open markets
in Laos they cost around the equivalent of three US dollars.
As of 1998, in the exotic pet trade in the US, a young,
breedable, healthy individual runs $1500-2500.
Adults are content to live in breeding pairs, although they seem
especially happy when left in a large non-competitive group that
has been raised together. CPT has successfully housed 4-7
adult males together long-term, and has shifted some individual
adults between groups without undue stress on the animals. Mixing
of males into new groups as adults has not been successful.
Even as adults, they are playful and attentive to each other,
with young animals and breeding pairs exhibiting grooming
behaviors and a desire to be near each other most of the time.
Females come in season a few times each year. Her behavior
toward the male and toward human visitors may be more aggressive
at this time. The female’s genitalia are especially
large, and have been called masculine. They do strongly
resemble the male’s anatomy, including a “false
penis,” an impression created in part by the presence of a
clitoral bone. Couples mate several times, often in a
variety of positions, during her season. The gestation
period is ninety days, and late spring babies are the norm,
though we have also had fall and winter babies on occasion.
They are extremely comfortable mating even in a public forum,
often making playful noises and chasing each other
non-aggressively during mating.
Most binturong mothers give birth in their den boxes, although it
is common to also see them “nest” outside. Usually
they simply choose a site sheltered from the elements on the
ground. The attitude of the mother toward the presence of
people depends largely on how the bint was raised--in most cases
they will not threaten or attack unless it is obvious a person is
making a move to handle the babies. We have had at least
one case in which a worker had raised the mother as an infant,
and in return, the mother bint let the woman handle her babies
from the first week on. Fathers are present in the cage at
CPT when babies are born, although they usually are up in a tree
or somewhere else both away from the mother and at a height that
allows them to watch the area. Some fathers tend to be
passive, especially if the mother is assertive and confident.
Other fathers are very protective, charging, growling, and
slamming into the fence if they feel threatened. This
behavior usually only lasts while the infants are very young (1-2
weeks). In some cases, two sibling or same-generation
females have shared a cage with the one male. The two
females usually co-mother infants, and if both have offspring at
roughly the same time, will suckle and keep together the
other’s children with their own.
Newborns weigh several ounces and are about the size of a human
fist. Most litters contain 1-3 bintlings or bintlets (OK,
we don’t have a scientific name for the infants, so these
are our cutsey names), but litters as large as 5 have been born
at CPT, though only a portion of that litter survived. In
the case of multiple offspring, there is almost always one runt
who is significantly smaller than its siblings. Infants
resemble kittens or small puppies in their state at birth; they
must be licked dry by the mothers, they have closed eyes and
folded ears, are generally helpless but can make a loud mewling
if needed. Their front feet can grasp instinctively, more
like hands than feet, and their prehensile tail also has a
grasping reflex. They usually begin sucking within an hour
of birth. If the mother needs to transport them, she will
either grasp them around the body just in front of the hind legs,
or she will scruff them. As with kittens, the mothers must lick
the infants to empty their bowels from birth until about four
weeks of age. Baby bints also have a very distinctive odor,
much like popcorn or "Frito" chips. The adult
bints have a scent pouch called a perineal gland which they drag
across branches, etc. to scent-mark their areas with an oily
substance (they will also sometimes rub their back feet back and
forth, the way some larger cats do when they mark). Some of
the wildlife books have suggested that this, too, smells like
popcorn, but I have not smelled any particularly noticeable odor.
(Of course, after this level of exposure, my nose's faculties
come into question...) Some of the mothers will mark their
offspring, especially if they are abandoning it. This type
of marking smells like strong urine, and it is difficult to wash
off. All bints are also capable of “skunking”
when very frightened. This is a fine spray of liquid which
has an acrid smell and which actually almost burns when inhaled.
While many people have a strong allergic reaction to bints in
general, I know of at least one person who had an anaphylactic
reaction to an infant skunking, and she ended up in the emergency
room. The scent is slow to diffuse, and difficult to remove
from clothing. Although adults are capable of skunking, I
have only witnessed it from any animal older than eight weeks on
one occasion, when a male was being moved too roughly against his
will. In a situation when some animals would have chosen to
bite, this one defecated and skunked.
Physical appearance varies widely from individual to individual.
The length of bints’ tails is fairly uniform at about 1.2
times the length of the entire bint, nose to tail base. Females
of mating age are commonly 20% larger than their male
counterparts, although they do not gain this size advantage until
close to maturity. Face shapes are significantly
diversified--emphasized especially by coloration and nose
shape--and family resemblances are remarkably clear. (I
have been surprised at how easy it is to tell apart a group of
bints I don’t even know, when I can look at a group of seven
young caracals and not be able to tell apart the two I raised!)
Their hair is generally rough textured and straight, but a few
bints I've encountered have had wavy locks along their necks and
backs.
Coloration patterns usually stay like they are at birth, but CPT
has had at least two cases in which a bint has lost much of its
hair, only to have it grow back in in an entirely different shade
and pattern. Almost all bint hair is black at its base,
with many hairs “tipped” in various lengths of white,
gold, or brown. Tipping occurs in predictable places,
although individuals’ patterns and colors vary widely.
The most common tipping is on the very tips of the ears, where
bints have extra-long tufts of hair. Most bints have a
white ridge along the top inside crest of the ear. Many
also have round white eyebrows, though the very base of that hair
is also black. Other common coloration occurs along the
sides and backs of the forelegs, and on the thighs. The
hair is usually longer here, often the same length as the ear
tufts. Some bints have a white stripe running down the
underside of the tail, starting at the joint. Only one CPT
bint has a full-length stripe, but several others have ones that
run at least one-third the length of the tail. The tail
hair is usually longer and thicker near the base than at the end.
The last common location of tipping is on the top and back of the
head, often “monk-style.” Less common tipping is
on bellies, under chins, on the sides of the face, and on the
front of legs. CPT has one bint in particular who is almost
completely tipped, with the area around his eyes, the tip of his
tail, and between his toes as the only untipped areas. While
his tipping is very pale blonde, he leaves a more coffee-colored
impression because each hair still starts out black at the root.
In Asia, a partner program to CPT has in captivity several bints
with white chests--not just tipped, but actually white. Others
have white feet or muzzles.
Eye color may be linked in some way to other coloration. Most
bints have rich reddish-brown to medium chocolate brown eyes.
The individuals CPT has which have the most tipping also have a
slightly varied eye color: a dark blue-gray ring around the
outside, brighter brown and green flecks closer to the pupil, all
leaving the impression of hazel.
Bints have a cluster of whisker-like eyebrows above each eye, and
additional whiskers along the cheeks in the same places as a cat.
The whiskers are thick and sensitive, but are not long enough to
provide information to the bint on the width of spaces to help it
determine whether or not it can pass through them.
Binturong feet are of interesting structure. The front feet
are designed to grasp, dig, climb, and hold and open fruits.
The back feet are designed to grip and balance during climbing
and to hang from branches with the support of the tail. The
pads of the feet are very soft at birth and harden remarkably
little over a bint’s lifetime. Each foot has four main
toes and an innermost, slightly shorter toe which serves as the
opposing thumb when grasping objects which must be braced. When
climbing or hanging, the bint uses the toes on its front feet all
together, with no opposing digit. The back foot toes, on
the other hand, it uses in a two-and-three split, so no one toe
carries too much weight. This is easiest to see when the
bint hangs straight down by tail and toes alone. He will
rotate his hips and ankles so the soles of his rear feet face his
tail (up and behind), and will hook the two backmost toes as the
additional support for the tail. No adult bint cheerfully
hangs only from his tail unless he is planning to drop onto
whoever or whatever is below him, and he is in the last stages of
planning the drop. Bints also use the rear foot 2/3 toe
split when walking on narrow objects, such as a tree branch or a
wire. In contrast, most keep their front toes together,
even if it means less grip with the front feet. They are
capable of bending both sets of feet slightly in from the upper
outside edge, so as to effectively fold the foot lengthwise
around whatever they are walking on. I have seen on many
occasions an adult bint walking and even running on a wire the
diameter of a pencil. They are also quite capable of
sleeping straddled across such wires or branches, with chin or
cheek on the line in front of them, right legs on one side, left
on the other, and the tail locked around the support with one or
two wraps, just in case. Bint toenails are only
semi-retractable. They do not sheath in the way a
cat’s do, but the bint does control how far they are
extended and how much of the curved nail digs into its goal.
Young bints have a hard time learning when and how to use them
efficiently, but animals handled a great deal learn to be very
gentle during contact with people. One young male I helped
raise loves to ride on my shoulders still, and he used to gouge
my legs and back as he scaled me to reach my shoulders. Eventually
we worked out a method that involves no scratches--he hoists
himself partway up by the pockets of my jeans, then I boost him
up until he can pull up onto my shoulders. He does not use
his claws while standing on my shoulders, and I do not move too
quickly, so he doesn’t lose his balance and need to dig in.
Bint noses are cold, black, and wet, much like the average
dog’s. Eyelashes are short, thick, and curly. Tongues
and gums are pink (I haven’t seen any black markings like
some dogs have), and the teeth are standard Carnivore issue.
Front canines are around 1.5 cm long, measured from the
gum’s edge.
As a baby bint grows, it changes shape. Very small bints
retain the pear-shape of all milk-fed babies. Older youth
go through growing spurts that cause them to look slender, if not
lanky. Before bints can see, they like to stay together with
their siblings in a warm pile. As soon as their eyes can
really focus (2-3 weeks old), they begin to follow the mom when
she leaves them. They begin to tussle with each other a
bit, and to play at resisting a bath from mom. At this age,
they have an exaggerated startle response to anything moving
toward them quickly or from above, especially if it blocks out
the light before they can smell it. Usually, they warn of
their fear with a growl, and perhaps an outright snarl. Sometimes
they skunk. Advanced bints at this age develop their
"Ninja noise" vocabulary, making sounds that are
similar to those heard in the worst of the bad fighting movies
("Whoaaaaaa...."). They cling tightly to whatever
they are able to grasp, earning this stage the nickname of
“Velcro bints” by those to lift them and must put them
down again.
By four weeks, the bints have a wider range of vocalizations (and
volume), and they are getting stronger at play-wrestling. They
recognize a variety of scents, and retain memories of the people
they encounter for several days. If they are not with the
mother and siblings, they seem to enjoy the company of a stuffed
animal or a sock, which they wrestle with and pounce on.
At five weeks, their coordination has improved to the point where
they can consistently walk without falling or dragging their
bellies. They can run in short spurts, hang without fear of
falling, and sometimes even climb down from the place they were
hanging from. By this time, their vocalizations include a
bawling yell for mom, and angry “bark” noise, a
“War Cry” (which sounds like a growling, snarling
bark), and a soft, rumbling purr. They make these noises at
appropriate times, even in play. They are also learning a
special bint move which we affectionately call the “duck
pounce” or “duck kill” (I don’t know
why this name came about, since bints don’t eat ducks...)
This advanced bint move involves standing on the hind legs, using
the tail for balance, and then slamming down the two front feet
simultaneously, all while giving a War Cry. Bints who were
pulled from parents very early perform this move on their own,
seemingly instinctively. A coordinated bint has a long
“hang time” (the amount of time on the hind legs,
balanced, before pouncing), and can recover fast enough to repeat
the move right away. Older bints can cross a room or cage
slamming the ground at every step, and in some cases, leaping
while slamming to cover ground faster.
A six to eight week-old bint climbs everything in sight. Trees,
den boxes, mom, people, furniture, bookshelves...even up to
scaling door frames. Those raised indoors may learn to open
cabinets using the handle, to scale up to counter-tops to find
the goodies hidden there, and to open doors using the knobs.
They can learn to unhook latches, pull pins out of holes to be
able to push open doors, peel open wrappers, and lift objects to
climb beneath them, especially if a human is kind enough to
demonstrate. They can pick up an amazing array of modeled
behavior very quickly (a walking rebuke to Thorndike). They
have become fairly adept at hanging and even at dropping down
onto a flat surface. They also love to establish a sort of
running track, around which they can speed. An example of
such a track in my house is the circle Annika and Edgar Bint
invented. First, they climbed into the swivel chair. If
the chair contained a person, it only added to the fun. From
the chair arm, they launched to the lamp, hitting it at about the
three-foot mark. They scaled the lamp to the top (at about
six feet), leaped back down to the back of the chair, ran across
it, leaped to a pile of trash bags containing Goodwill stuff,
slid down the side of the pile to the nearby bookshelf, pushed
off the bookshelf and over the animal carrier case, and were back
at the chair base again. The whole circuit took them a
while at first, but once they became proficient, they could
manage it at breakneck speed. Normally, a climbing bint
takes everything slowly, by the mountain climber’s
rule--never lifting a foot until the other three are confirmed on
secure ground. However, in the case of young bints playing
(or the appearance of food), this rule is overlooked.
At CPT, an eight to ten week-old bint can be moved into an
outdoor cage. As long as there are other bints for company,
the young ones do not seem to mind a change of scenery much.
They love to have climbing toys or trees to explore. They
also enjoy wading pools, swings and tire swings, hollow tree
stumps, etc. CPT has one adult bint with severe scoliosis
which prevents her from being able to roughhouse with those her
own age. Instead, she is the mother-figure to all upcoming
youngsters. She is gentle and nurturing with all of them,
and she loves to play with them, albeit her climbing skills are
limited.
CPT experiments with babies have led to the conclusion that
pulling them from the mothers at around four weeks is ideal.
Those who were pulled sooner, other than on the first few days of
life, showed no significant improvement in the quality of their
bonding with a human mother, or the quality of their interactions
with other humans. In fact, they lost time on the
mother’s milk and all its benefits. Those babies that
were left until six weeks never formed a satisfactory,
comfortable relationship with people, and instead are generally
afraid of them. While these bints may grow to trust
individuals, they are unduly stressed by the presence of
strangers, and are upset by being handled when sick or injured.
There is no significant difference in the mother’s reaction
whether they are pulled at four or six weeks. She will be
upset, charging and looking for the infants. Some have
knocked over their den boxes, pulled down branches, and, of
course, chased the person removing the babies. There are
occasions when bints are pulled younger than four weeks, as when
the mother does not care for them, or if they develop an illness.
In these cases, bonding to people is strong, and the adjustment
to playing with other bints takes longer.
Bints younger than four weeks do not have many teeth in yet, so
they are usually bottle fed a formula of Goati-lac, bananas, and
yogurt, supplemented with Osteoform (calcium), vitaderm (infant
vitamins), and Diet Derm (oil). They eat 2-4 ounces four
times each day. If an infant is sick or underweight, they
may have extra protein and calories added to the formula (like
peanut butter), and may be fed additional times each day. As
their teeth come in, they move to more solid food. Bananas
are almost everyone’s favorites. Most start with a
“banana mushie” made of baby oatmeal, a mashed banana,
peanut butter, jelly, and some formula. They progress to
small pieces of banana, cut grapes, mango, pear, and other soft
fruit.
As adults, their diets include all manner of fruits, some
vegetables, and some meats. In the wild, part of their role
is to process seeds, especially those of the strangler fig.
This vine makes up a large part of the canopy of the rain forest,
and its seeds cannot germinate without assistance. A
process in the bints’ intestines called endozoochory breaks
down the outer seed coating and prepares it to begin growing.
It is then deposited in a neat pile of fertilizer, usually below
or in a convenient host tree.
They need to eat on most days, depending on the weather. They
eat more sparingly in the summer (although there’s always
room for more ‘nanas) than in the winter, when they need the
extra calories. They prefer the sweetest foods, with the
exception of their taste for meats. A partial list:
apples, melons of all types, cantaloupes, grapes, pears, kiwi,
mangos, star fruits, avocados, oranges, grapefruit, nectarines,
peaches, cherries, tomatoes, chicken (raw or cooked), mice and
rats, beef, fish, some greens (mostly the stems of anything green
in their cage except for grass and poison ivy) and any sweets
anyone will feed them. Marshmallows are a big hit, as are
chocolate muffins, apple pie, and McDonald’s egg nog
milkshakes. Never again will I give any binturongs
concentrated sugar when I have to share living space with them.
When Edgar and Annika were about six weeks old, they teamed up on
us on the couch one night. We humans had been foolish
enough to think that we could eat lollipops without sharing.
After they each finished gnawing the hard candy off the sticks,
they walked around for a few minutes licking their sticky lips
and paws, seemingly unaffected. Suddenly, Edgar dove across
the couch and tackled Annika. She return-pounced, sending
them both crashing to the floor. They sped around their
“personal indoor track,” climbed to great heights (for
them) and leaped, raced across our laps, and would not slow down.
When the sugar rush passed almost an hour later, they both drank
a lot of water and slept soundly.
Adult binturong behavior is largely predicted by the manner in
which the bint was raised. Wild-caught bints are not
terribly interested in people beyond their service of bringing
food. Even these are not actively aggressive unless
cornered, although if a person has angered a bint, he may slyly
attempt to urinate or defecate on that person from above. Those
bints raised by people tend to remain interactive, although how
interactive depends on the individual’s personality and who
his human visitors are. Bints remember who raised them and
who they knew when they were young if given even minimal contact
with these people on a regular basis. Since a bint’s
sight is rather poor, his sense of smell is very important to
him. When a bint approaches anything new, he will prefer to
approach from above, when possible. One young bint named
Spike was being raised in a household with a fish tank. He
would scale a rocking chair and perch precariously on its back to
be able to observe the fishtank from above, although the view was
much better from the side (of course, he may have seen them open
the top to feed). I have seen individuals climb along the
edges and ceiling of cages, in the most circuitous routes, rather
than touch the ground, even to get to food. They like to
hang down from above to smell the tops of people’s heads as
a means of introduction. Even the ones who are accustomed
to climbing up or being picked up to greet people like to smell
scalps as soon as possible. Because of the sharpness of
bint claws and the weight of an adult, some people sit on the
ground to accommodate this habit. Most hand-raised bints
believe themselves to be lap-pets. Many will begin grooming
their humans after the greeting. This may involve
flea-hunting on heads or arms, nose-nibbling, ear-snuffling, and
general poking about into pockets or shoes, if allowed. With
their amazing sense of smell, most can smell a pocket that once
held a marshmallow treat at five paces. They are adept at
eating while hanging upside down, also, tilting their heads so as
to not lose fruit juices.
Aggressive adult behavior is not especially common toward humans,
and is seen more often toward mates. Between bints,
aggression may take the form of the female snarling and biting
when she is in heat, or there may be a fuss over who gets the
last of the really good food. For the most part, even
feeding is a peaceful activity for bints, with adult males
comfortably sharing individual bananas. Most aggression
toward humans occurs when a pair has babies (as described above),
when a female is preparing to give birth, and if an animal is
sick or hurt. The sole pre-birthing aggression experience I
have had was when I entered the cage of a binturong named Bashful
to clean up. Normally a quiet and shy bint, as her name
implies, Bashful instead began growling and barking. I
stopped just inside the cage door, surprised by this new
attitude. She stood still, the hair on the back of her neck
and in a ridge along her spine standing on end as she glowered.
Suddenly, she launched off her den box top, and began
duck-pouncing across the cage toward me. Being an advanced
duck-pouncer, she covered the ground between us in bounds, as she
slammed her front feet down and bellowed. I backed quickly
out of the cage, and she stopped pursuit several feet short of
the door. Her mate, Bok, looked down on me commiseratingly
from his position on the furthest tip of the highest limb he
could possibly be treed on. Bashful gave birth to three
infants that night.
The only other problems with adult aggression which I have heard
of stem from an animal associating pain with an individual.
In one case, a woman attempted to give a netted bint a shot
without other human assistance. Since bints get most shots
in their tails, he was able to whirl and bite her. Another
case is that of Daniel, who has associated a staff worker with
the scent of her ferret, who bit him when he was young, and her
dog, who just scared him. He, in turn, bit the woman on the
first day he was outdoors in his own cage, when she reached into
the den box to get him so she could carry him inside for the
night. When he smells her nearby, he still will growl and
ridge (raise the hair along his spine). At least he
doesn’t skunk anymore. In the one attempt I made to
help them make up, he carefully climbed onto her shoulder,
sniffed in her ear, and defecated all down the back of her shirt
and on her hair. No more reconciliation attempts have been
made.
Females which have come into season do not always have mates that
behave aggressively towards people. In a few cases, I have
seen male bints become wildly affectionate toward people during
this time. Some like to climb on people's backs and rub
their bellies furiously up and down, and others will grab on and
"hump" people's legs like a dog does. Hand-raised
bints are not generally shy about their reproductive habits.
I have seen bints engaging in sexual activities in a remarkable
variety of positions, and regardless of whether or not they have
a human audience. I have seen "doggie style"
coitus, as well as belly to belly. On a den box, in a tree,
on the tire swing...they are very flexible. The most
remarkable locale for bint sex I have encountered I was
unfortunately unable to actually see being used. I entered
the cage of a hand-raised pair, and them female was more friendly
than normal. She climbed on my back and was making happy
little whuffling noises into my ear. Then she suddenly got
much heavier and there were two noses whuffling in my ear as the
male mounted her while she was riding on my back. I got a
friend outside the cage to confirm that this is what they were
doing, and I promptly dumped them off and left the cage so they
could have some privacy, as human dignity requires.
Bints are intelligent and trainable. They can be trained to
harness walk easily, though many handlers find it easier to just
let them ride on their shoulders. They are often taught by
zoos to respond to verbal and hand commands for performances.
Most hand-raised bints are very eager to please their humans.
Weather changes have a massive effect on the way bints behave.
In hot weather, they pant to help cool down, have a reduced
appetite, and sleep most of the time. They also consume
less meat. They seek out shade under their den boxes or in
the trees. They also love to dunk themselves in their
wading pools. When the Fall comes, their hair thickens and
lengthens. The pads of their feet toughen a bit around the
edges, where the hair also grows more thickly. The centers
of the pads on their feet do not toughen much, which has led to
cold damage (see below). In cold weather, they hole up in
their den boxes, usually trying to cram everybody into one box,
no matter how crowded and stuffy it is, or how many other, empty
boxes there are. Some bints have the unfortunate habit of
defecating in these boxes, but even they seem to do this less in
the winter. They are more prone to health problems in cold
weather, in part because of actual cold damage, and in part
because whole groups remain in close proximity for extended
periods of time. Bints still make an attempt to get some
sun, either by flattening out on the roof of their den boxes, or
by stretching out in the grass in the lee of some shelter.
Some of the health problems encountered by these animals are
predictable. They have a high instance of dental problems
(cavities, gum disease, etc.) as they age. Some older
animals develop cataracts, lose hair on the head and tail or have
hair break off mid-shaft, and suffer arthritis, especially if
they have been declawed. Some infants develop skin
problems, like minor staph infections, and bottle-fed infants
must be guarded against respiring the milk and developing
pneumonia. Young bints seem more susceptible than adults to
cage-related problems like mange and roundworms. Bints can learn
to eat meat when only seven or eight weeks old, but are very
vulnerable to food poisoning while young. In all these
areas, the treatment is much the same as for any cat. They
handle antibiotics well (especially if they get it in a banana),
and most do not mind taking Panacur or Rintal for worms. The
standard vaccines used include Fel-V and rabies, though there
have been no studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of these.
Distemper vaccines given to binturongs have actually caused cases
of the disease, so clearly they should be avoided. Some
illnesses we have encountered, however, are less predictable and
harder to treat than in cats.
First, a bint is very hard to knock out, even using injectable
Valium, or a Valium/Ketamine mix. They are slow to come up
if they are knocked out completely, as with Isofluorine, so for
minor procedures they are generally just moderately sedated.
This also reduces the risk of seizures and breathing difficulties
in the sedated animals. Blood samples are taken from the
jugular, usually involving shaving of a patch of neck in order to
see through the thick hair. They are difficult to draw
blood from, as their necks are thickly muscled and the veins and
arteries buried deeply (for self-preservation?). For human
convenience (and safety) other shots can be given in the tail,
though near its tip it is fairly sensitive. Shots given in
the tough upper part of the tail do not seem to bother them very
much, if given with a small needle. Young animals handle
these shots rather well, though older bints have been known to
respond with a nasty bite if not held or sedated for shots.
The act of holding them immobile sometimes upsets them morew than
the treatments, as is the case with most wild animals.
Bints are poorly equipped to deal with winter weather, and
despite heated den boxes, manage to sustain cold weather damage
occasionally even in North Carolina. In the winter of
1995-6, unusually icy and snowy conditions caused record damage
at CPT. Bints who remained out of their dens or who got wet
and did not dry themselves in their dens ended up with frostbite
on toes and tails, including a few severe cases. Three or
four lost toes to the cold. In some cases, the animals
underwent surgical removal of the toes. In other cases,
especially with animals who were wild-caught or older (who would
be at higher risk during the surgery and traumatized by
additional handling), the toes fell off naturally, and the
animals were treated to prevent infection. CPT has found
that the homeopathic remedy of calendula is helpful in healing
the area around the toes quickly and preventing further damage.
In the more severe case of damage to tails, the animals underwent
surgery to dock the tail and prevent the further loss of tissue.
This occurred only in the young binturongs during this winter,
and their success in adapting to life with less of a tail has
varied depending on how much of the tail was lost. Edgar
lost close to one-third of his tail, and for a solid month he
held it out stiffly behind him, allowing it to help with balance
but not gripping, relying only on his feet for purchase. He
began using his tail gingerly in the second month after surgery,
and now will use it to help hang, though it is not as sensitive
or agile as the other bints’ tails. Melon (named when
she was a bald baby) lost close to half of her tail, and she has
had some difficulty adapting. She was placed back in her
original cage on a trial basis after surgery, but she had trouble
hanging on to her tree and the tall fence without falling. Before
she could get hurt, she was transferred to a smaller, lower cage
with climbing toys and swings to help her regain what use she
could get from her tail. She is now a capable climber, but
her grip does not compare to the other bints’. She is
still easily pushed off balance by other bints on branches and
smooth surfaces. Her own balance is excellent, but
her ability to cling to a surface has been severely curbed.
Once she climbs to a safe place in her tree, she only comes down
to eat or get in a warm den box, if necessary.
The most devastating problem faced by the bints has been an odd
disorder faced only by the five to eight week-old bints, usually
shortly after their first set of shots. The baby suddenly
develops a palsy or shake, starting in the legs and spreading to
the whole body. In some cases, the animal has recovered
sufficiently to be successfully caged outdoors with others, but
at times of high stress or cold weather, the animals sometimes
have a sort of relapse involving shaking and difficulty moving
with any speed, strength, or balance. There has been
significant hair loss or breakage associated with this condition
also. I suspect it is caused by some inability to properly
process some necessary vitamin. In all cases, the hair has
grown back in, thick and very fuzzy, albeit a different texture
and color than the original hair. The group of animals with
this disorder (about 1.5 years old) are behaviorally
different from the other unaffected bints, too. They tend
to not be part of the group in the tree, but are rather alone in
their den box. Sometimes the opposite occurs; everyone else
is in their box or eating, and the shaky one is alone in the
tree. We cannot assume, then, that the isolation is due to
their inability to climb and participate in the group life within
the cage. As for the cause of this disorder, CPT has been unable
to establish a credible connection between the vaccination shots
and the disorder. There may also be a genetic
predisposition, as two of the three affected bints are siblings,
and the third is a cousin. Since the Trust has hired a
part-time staff veterinarian in the last few years, there may
have been additional progress made on this.
On a more positive note, binturongs have an interesting trait
that may help them heal themselves. Their saliva has
remarkably antiseptic qualities, more so than any other animal I
have ever worked with. While most animals benefit from
licking their wounds, the bints also lick each others’
wounds, and wounds they spot on people. Having conducted
several only tenuously scientific experiments using Daniel and
Josh as lickers, I have been amazed at the difference their
tending made to the speed with which the wound healed. In
every case, the licked part of cuts and scratches healed
literally overnight, while unlicked parts often took several days
longer to heal. The amount of scarring was also reduced,
and as an individual prone to keyloid scars (big, bumpy scarring
from minor injuries), I can honestly say that no bint-licked
place I was injured ever scarred. At all. Though
cats and dogs also have some of these qualities in their saliva,
I have never seen such an extreme reaction by healing fast in my
work with them. I look forward to photographing the effects
next time to document the difference between treated and
untreated cuts.
This section is
purely whimsical. A series of fun case studies:
Daniel
Daniel is a very gentle bint who has a terrible fear of ferrets
and dogs. He has associated them with one staff worker,
whom he has bitten and attacked several times. He and I
have a routine--when I visit, I let him out into the safety cage
so I don’t get mauled by the other excited bints. He
will lay in my lap for a tummy scratch, rest across my shoulders,
and snuffle in my ears. He always smells the top of my head
first, usually by exiting his cage over the open door instead of
through it. He has learned to scale me without using nails
above the jeans line (a tough lesson for us both). He had a
bout with roundworms recently, and when regular doses of Rintal
didn’t do it, he came back home with me (at 9 months old) to
get better and gain some weight. Where do you keep a
half-grown bint in an apartment? In the half bathroom, of
course. After five days of worming meds, he got back an
appetite for Friskies Kitten food and bananas. Yum. He
also learned to untie the string holding shut the bathroom
cabinet, how to turn on the water in the sink, and how to open
the washing machine. He has a younger brother (different
litters) who was still living with me at the time, so I let them
play after Daniel felt better. Joshua is a loud-mouth, so
he screamed every time Daniel touched him, but Daniel learned to
ignore that. I videoed them together during the two days
they played, and in the half-darkness you can see them run up the
stairs together, wrestle, roll down the stairs in a ball, slam
into the wall across from the steps, laugh, and get up and run up
again. When Daniel got tired, he would go into the bathroom
and push the door shut on Josh. Daniel is very clever, but
I’m afraid he’s also a “Mama’s Boy.”
He and his sister Panama pulled the pin on their feeding slot
door one evening and escaped. When they were found, his
sister was out wandering and enjoying herself, but Daniel had
actually broken into the safety cage in an
effort to return home. It took the staff a while to notice
the pin out of the slot--they’d thought the escape artists
came through the door into the safety cage before getting out.
Joshua
Joshua lived with us for just over sixteen weeks, twice the
normal age for a baby to stay with a foster mom. He was a
winter baby, so he needed the extra time indoors rather than get
too cold outside. By five weeks, Josh would eat any solid,
sliced fruit set before him except for bananas. He hated
bananas. Everyone in the neighborhood knew him by name and
all the local teenagers and college professors came to visit most
days. When one woman came to visit Josh almost two months
after he moved outdoors, he remembered her and ran right up to
her. Josh is not only an excellent climber, but also an
escape artist. His first major escape was through a hole he
made in the side of his playpen (topped with shelving boards to
dissuade leaving). We found him in the dryer. He had
opened the door and climbed in with the warm clothes. The
second escape was also through the top of the pen. We came
home and found the living room trashed. The seven-foot lamp
was on its side and bashed in, a climbing pole was laying over on
the stairs, the coffee table was cleaned off (not the condition
we left it in), and the garbage can was overturned and rooted
through. The crib planks had been supplemented by books,
which were in a heap on the floor. The kitchen floor was
decorated by chocolate and marshmallow footprints, and the open
cabinet doors were exposing littered shelves of empty Ho-Ho
wrappers. The lightly sampled peanut-butter crackers were
cast aside near the Ho-Ho box and marshmallow bag. The
guilty party was asleep at the top of the stairs in the (luckily)
dirty laundry pile. Josh learned to open cabinets as a
method of reaching the countertops (and the chocolate). This
distressed the staff member who kept him as a day camper just
before he moved outside. She called us to report, “He
opened the cabinet doors. No, I don’t think you do
understand. He used the handles.”
He was able to scale the door frames in an impressive manner by
eleven weeks. He was already significantly larger than his
littermate, Tristan, when they were pulled at three-and-a-half
weeks. After Tristan battled food poisoning, Josh more than
doubled him in weight and size. Josh, unlike Daniel, had an
easy transition to outdoors life, and has been moved in with
Daniel and company. He is enormous. Tristan has been
relegated to breaking in the new eight-week old kids moving
outside, since he is so much closer to their size.
Kira
Kira is a gentle adult bint who seemed normal in her youth.
After she was moved outside, she began to have trouble climbing
and got “the shakes.” She developed a gradually
worsening case of scoliosis which led to her becoming an indoor
bint for treatment. She has reacted poorly when placed
outdoors in a cage, though she enjoys the company of other bints.
When she is left outside, she is prone to sudden attacks of
panic, and she will climb the fence and get stuck. Eventually,
she falls. Indoors, she has her own room, and is litterbox
trained. She loves to spend time with new young bints,
especially ones old enough to play. She can perform a
modified duck-pounce and she tussles with them very gently.
She hates ocelots and baths, and has learned to drive the ferret
away quickly. Unlike the outdoors bints, Kira is bothered
by fleas, which are normally only interested in baby bints or
humans. She remembers the other bints she knows, and she
gets excited when visited by a human who has spent time with her
friends--the ones her age or the younger ones she helped raise.
Her memory is excellent, as she reacts with great excitement to
familiar scents, and not at all to bints she hasn’t
met.
Some Housing Experiments
The Frat house is a successful collection of six adult males
housed together. They do not fight, and seem to enjoy each
other’s company. There is also a cage of seven young
bints (1.5 years old), both male and female, who live together
and play in harmony. Unfortunately, they will have to be
separated soon, so relatives don’t have offspring.
We have one bint, Disney, who fell so hard for his sister that he
refused every other mate, and in fact, beat them up. We
finally tried him with another female, the toughest of the lot of
young ones, selecting her without regard to lineage, since he was
vasectomized. After almost two years alone, he accepted the
new female remarkably well, and she quickly established her own
territory in the cage. We were so pleased with ourselves...until
we checked the lineages and found that she was also his sister.