Meet the super-rare bearcats that smell of popcorn

Lancashire Post

Meet the adorable family of ultra-rare Binturong - a bearcat that swings in the trees, and smells like popcorn (Video produced, filmed and edited by Lucinda Herbert).  The endangered specie is closely related to civets and they are used in the production of an expensive type of coffee made from beans that have been ingested and then excreted by these mammals.  Visit the Binturongs and learn more about them at Wild Discovery, a small interactive zoo in Ribby Hall Village https://wilddiscovery.co.uk/

Transcript

00:00In the trees to the left of me is normally where the Binturong reside and they usually

00:04sit at the top of the tree, especially when the sun's out.

00:08Binturongs have a prehensile tail, it's a big muscle tail and they use that for hanging

00:13on.

00:14Quite often throughout the day you'll see them draping down the trees, holding on to

00:18the branches with the tails and eating the buds, which is what they're designed to do.

00:22So that is kind of what we would describe that would be environmental enrichment.

00:27So that's providing them with an environment that is natural to them, enabling them to

00:32use their natural resource, their bodies, their abilities to kind of function normally.

00:39We also then create some artificial enrichment items for them, which again help strengthen

00:46their natural abilities and gives them a nice little treat.

00:50They're closely related to gennets and civets, they're from the Far East.

00:57Most people may have heard of civet coffee.

00:59It's one of the most expensive coffees on the planet and basically civets eat coffee berries

01:06and then their bodies can't digest the seed.

01:08So that's passed through and that's the coffee bean basically.

01:11So they poo out the coffee bean and apparently this is a delicacy and it's the most expensive

01:18coffee in the world that I'm led to believe.

01:21Binturong are also put through, so these animals are put in cages, force fed coffee berries and

01:27forced to poo out the beans so that those organizations that do that can actually generate huge amounts of income from tourism basically.

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