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Image: Palawan stink badger (Mydaus marchei).
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On this page: Introduction | The Indonesian stink badger | The Palawan stink badger
The Indonesian stink badger Mydaus javanensis was the first of these species to be discovered, and naturalists and zoologists have written rather more about it than they have about the Palawan stink badger Mydaus marchei . Inevitably then, much of what follows is devoted to the better known species, however both animals have much in common with regard to their appearance and general characteristics.
One of the characteristics shared by the stink badgers is of course the ability to produce a fetid secretion from their anal glands. This is something which I will deal with not on this page, but in relation these animals' predators and defences against them .
Some of the earliest descriptions of this stink badger, taken together, provide a fairly accurate guide to the appearance and general characteristics of the species. The most detailed of those early accounts appears to be that of Horsfield in 1820 [p1174]. He wrote:
The heavy form of the body, as well as the head gradually narrowed to an obtuse point, call to mind the figure of a hog. The shortness and strength of the neck, and the manner of walking ... contribute further to give the animal a sluggish appearance. The eyes are placed high in the head, and in their size and disposition have considerable resemblance to those of a hog: the eyelids are rigid, and well provided with eyebrows consisting of minute bristles; the irides are of a dark colour, and the pupil is circular. The ears are nearly concealed by the hairy covering of the body; but these organs are provided externally with an oblong concha, which surrounds the posterior part , and passing the extremity of the meatus auditorius [the ear's external opening], forms a small curve inward. No whiskers are perceptible, but a few long straggling hairs arise from the upper lip.
French naturalist Cuvier, writing in 1825, made similar observations, noting that the head of this animal resembles that of the badgers, the nose resembles that of the pig, whiskers are "very rare" and that the ear is almost completely devoid of an external conch [p1597].
Returning to Horsfield's 1820 account of this species [p1174], he stated that: "The limbs are short and stout, and the feet agree in structure with those of the allied genera, being formed for the plantigrade manner of walking. The claws are united at the base by a thick membrane, which envelopes this part as a sheath. Those of the fore feet are nearly double the size of those of the hind feet." Huet's 1887 paper adds that the claws are yellowish white [p1468]; those on the forefeet have since been recorded as 2 - 2.5 cm in length [p111-3]. Clearly this animal is built for digging. While it may perhaps be capable of short bursts of moderate speed on occasion, it seems likely that the usual movements of the Indonesian stink badger are slow, indeed Horsfield referred to its "rambles in search of food." I am not aware of any reports of this creature climbing or swimming.
Cuvier noted that the Indonesian stink badgers "have only a useless and very short tail" while Oldfield Thomas, describing the stink badgers on Borneo, stated that the tail is "short and stumpy, but its hairs extremely long and forming a conspicuous brush" [p1467]. Cuvier also reported that there were six mammae or teats, four pectoral (on the chest) and two inguinal (on the lower abdomen) [p1597] and this has been confirmed by others [p36].
Horsfield had this to say regarding the pelage of the Indonesian stink badgers of Java [p1174]:
The covering of the Teledu is adapted to the elevated and cold regions which it inhabits. The fur is composed of long delicate hairs, silky at the base, which are closely arranged, and afford a very warm coat to the body. On the sides of the neck the hairs are lengthened, and have a curved direction upward and backward; on the top of the head, meeting from before and behind, they form a small transverse crest, and on the abdomen they are thinly disposed, and afford in some parts a view of the naked skin. The colour of the hairs is blackish-brown, more or less intense on every part of the body, except the crown of the head, a streak along the back, and the extremity of the tail. These parts are white, with a slight tint of yellow. The mark on the head has a rhomboidal form, obtuse and rounded anteriorly, but gradually attenuated as it passes the shoulders, where it unites with the streak on the back; in some individuals this streak is interrupted. On the abdomen the brown is of a lighter hue, inclining to grayish or rufus. The covering is subject to several variations: some of the individuals deposited in the Company's Museum are grayish-brown, others are deep brown with a sooty tint; the last colour, as far as my observation extends, is the most common...
To Horsfield's observations on the colour of the darker body hairs we can add the descriptions given by others: "very dark brown" (specimen from Java) [p1597]; "black above and below" (specimens from northern Borneo) [p1460]; "sides of face, throat, chest, and upperside of feet more or less varied with greyish white" (specimen from Natuna Besar, off Borneo) [p1467]; "uniformly dark, without lighter intermixture on face, chest, or feet" (specimen from northern Borneo) [p1467]; "the forehead, sides of the head, sides of the neck, the body, as well as the external parts of the legs, are coated with ... hair of a reddish-brown colour. The throat, chest, belly and the inner parts of the legs are covered with scattered hairs which are greyish-brown, this is because each hair is grey at the tip" (specimens from Java) [p1599].
The extent of the white or yellowish patch of hair on the head of M. javanensis is quite variable, as is the width of the stripe that continues from this patch along the middle of the back, and as Horsfield noted, the stripe is not always continous. A good illustration of this variability is provided by Dwight D Davis in a paper published in 1962 [p1460], in which he described two specimens from northern Borneo: "In a specimen from Sandakan the patch on the crown and nape is narrow and the dorsal stripe is absent except for a very narrow line on the rump, which is interrupted by black at the base of the tail; the terminal tail hairs are white. In a specimen from the Sapagaya Forest Reserve the whole head is white to a point just in front of the ears, the white continued over the forehead into a broad crown and nuchal patch, which in turn continues into a broad mid-dorsal stripe running the length of the body and tail; there is even some white on the feet of this individual."
Like Horsfield, Cuvier also descibed this species' hairs as silky, but Oldfield Thomas [p1467] stated that they are coarse while Huet [p1599] observed that they were woolly and slightly curly. From the various accounts of those who have examined specimens of the Indonesian stink badger and from photographs of living animals, we can say that while the fur is dense on the upper parts of the head and neck, the back, the flanks and the outer parts of the legs, the muzzle or snout is almost naked and there is only a sparse covering of hair on the insides of the legs, the belly and, according to Huet, the throat and chest [p36, p1468, p1597, p1599].
Although it appears that neither Horsfield nor Cuvier gave overall measurements or weights for the Indonesian stink badger when writing in the 1820s, Charles Hamilton Smith in 1843 gave a total length of "about 18 inches" (around 45.7 cm) [p1599]. Some years later in 1887, J Huet, noting the characteristics of this species (before describing the newly discovered Palawan stink badger, see below) stated that the youngest specimen in the collection of the Paris Museum was only 21 cm from the tip of the nose to the base of the tail [p1468]. Oldfield Thomas, describing his proposed species Mydaus lucifer and M. ollula (now regarded as subspecies) in 1902 [p1467] gave the following measurements for his type specimens (to which I give the subspecific Latin names):
Thomas stated that compared with M. javanensis of Java and Sumatra, lucifer was larger and ollula was about the same size as M. javanensis or smaller, although his type specimen for lucifer was actually smaller than that for ollula . However, 60 years later in 1962, a paper by Dwight D Davis provided the following measurements for "an old adult female and a subadult male" Indonesian stink badger [p1460]:
It would seem that other specimens have been found with head and body lengths of up to 51 cm and tails up to 7.5 cm in length [p3], giving a range of measurements for adult Indonesian stink badgers of: head and body 34 to 51 cm; tail 3.5 to 7.5 cm (longer with hairs taken into account); hind foot 5.2 to 7 cm.
The old female from North Borneo mentioned above weighed 1.275 kg [p1460], but weights of up to 3.6 kg have also been recorded [p3].
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This species was first described in a scientific journal in 1887 by the French naturalist J Huet [p1468). He wrote first about the Indonesian stink badger (see above), and then went on to highlight the ways in which the new stink badger from Palawan differed from its close relative (at that time known by the Latin name Mydaus meliceps ):
"We shall distinguish, at first sight, the differences which exist between this species and the previous one from the viewpoint of their external characteristics: first of all the pelage which, instead of being woolly and curly, is silky and straight. The head, the neck, the body and also the limbs are covered with glossy chocolate brown hair; on the muzzle, the sides of the cheeks, the throat, the chest, the belly and insides of the legs, the hairs are thinly scattered, but are similar in colour to those of the body, and have no grey tips. A white spot is found on the top of the head, in the shape of a spearhead, which just continues onto the neck, and there is no trace of the white line on the back or the rump; the tail, which is very short, is completely bare, it is a hairless stump. Without being very developed, the auditory conches are visible, whereas in M. meliceps of Java, they are almost completely lacking, and there is only an outer rim in their place." (With apologies for any errors in my translation from the French original.)
Two of the 'distinguishing features' flagged up by Huet may not be as definitive as he suggested. As noted above some authors have described the hair of M. javanensis as coarse rather than silky (indicating that there may be some variability in that species' hair texture). And while Huet regarded the small conches (or pinnae or external ears) of the Palawan species to be larger than those of its cousin, later authors have indicated that the opposite is in fact the case [p36].
Huet's description of this species' "chocolate brown" hair has been mirrored by Long and Killingley's statement that the pelage is "generally cocoa brown" although Long observed from his examinations of 14 specimens held by museums in the USA that the colouration does vary and in some animals it is similar to that of M. javanensis . Long also commented on the variability of the white patch of hair on the Palawan stink badger's head and the dorsal stripes extending from it. One of the specimens he examined simply had a small spot of white fur on the head, another had a smalish stripe about 12.7 cm long and 2.5 cm wide, while a third had a pair of thin stripes of around 10 to 15 cm in length extending onto the back. He stated that while it was not true to say that the Palawan stink badger's dorsal stripe was always absent, the stripe was often poorly defined. [p36]
In other respects the Palawan stink badger has the same general appearance as the Indonesian species, but on a slightly smaller scale. The length of the head and body is said to range from 32 to 46 cm and the tail from 1.5 to 4.5 cm [p3]; one subadult male had a head and body length of 31.1 cm and a tail which was 2.5 cm long [p36]. Although one specimen was found to weight about 2.5 kg, two others tipped the scales at about 0.8 and 0.9 kgs [p3, p36, p111-5].
Like M. javanensis , M. marchei also has four pectoral and two inguinal mammae or teats [p36]. It also has its cousin's plantigrade feet and long, curved, digging claws on the forefeet. It is generally slow in its movements, which were described by Ian Grimwood as a "ponderous, fussy walk" - however Grimwood also noted that when alarmed this animal can "sustain a steady trot for up to 100 yards" although the pace is "no faster than that of a walking man." [p36, p111-5]
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The Palawan stink badger photo used at the head of this Article is © Peter Widmann, and used with his permission. Credits for the photos used in the right-hand margin of this page for site navigation can be found on the Credits page.
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