The binturong marks its forest trails with the smell of buttered popcorn
Walk beneath a binturong's tree in a Southeast Asian forest and you might catch a whiff of hot buttered popcorn. The shaggy, tree-dwelling bearcat leaves that scent on branches, and the molecule responsible is the very one released when corn kernels pop in a pan.
The compound is 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which forms in the Maillard reaction when food is heated. It was long assumed to come from the glands under the binturong's tail, but a Duke University study found none there; it is concentrated entirely in the urine. As the animal drags its tail along a branch, oily musk from the glands mixes with the urine and helps the scent cling to bark in the humid canopy, signalling territory and probably readiness to mate.
Binturongs range from India and Nepal across Southeast Asia to Indonesia and the Philippines, from sea level to 3,000 metres. They are heavy, short-legged climbers with coarse black fur and a thick prehensile tail they use as a fifth limb, moving slowly but surely along the tops or undersides of branches. Females are bigger than males and dominate them. Radio-tracked animals in Thailand were most active at dawn and dusk and covered up to about 4 kilometres a day in the wet season.
Despite a carnivore's skull, sharp teeth and strong bite, the binturong eats mostly plant matter, above all figs. Its gut softens the hard coats of strangler fig seeds, making it a keystone disperser for those trees. It will also take small mammals, birds and insects when chances arise.
Few predators trouble adults, though tigers and dholes occasionally do. A cornered binturong growls, hisses, screams and may spray the attacker with urine, and its dense coat makes a clean bite difficult. Much of what is known about breeding comes from captivity: pregnancies last 84 to 99 days, and animals stay fertile for 15 of their roughly 18 years. The species is classed as vulnerable.
Source: Binturong
