#civets

Yeah I love civets.

I’ve got a tattoo of a small Indian civet on my solar plexus. It’s basically my special interest tattoo. (With my special interest being animal defense mechanisms).

This specific species (Viverricula indica) is cool as fuck. They are a monotypic species (meaning the only one in the genus) and African civets and other Asian civets diverged from the genus Viverricula over 16 million years ago.

Not much is known about small Indian civets, but they can adapt to various environments similarly to raccoons. They have almost no predators and are very talented, opportunistic hunters. They’ve also got some really powerful camouflage with their stripes and spots!! And they can squish and stretch their bodies and move in really weird ways!

The concept of this tattoo is, in itself, an adaptation. (Again, really going in on my special interest.) It is supposed to look like a tarot card, but the actual tarot card is “The Hanged Man” (which is my favorite card.) But the term hanged man refers to the person being hung, meanwhile, the hangman is the person doing the hanging.

Just like the small Indian civet, it looks like something people are might be familiar with, but more than likely, they actually know what they hell they are looking at.

The tattoo basically works as a trap card. If I’m out looking hot in a crop top/bathing suit and someone tries to get weird and flirt with me, the’ll mention the tattoo and then *bam* they get info dumped at and they end up fleeing.

Alternatively, if someone insufferable comments about how “umm actually, it’s the hanged man” and tries to tell me I don’t know about tarot cards, then they get to learn that I am, in fact, the queen of “um actuallys,” and I send them crawling back into whatever hole they came out of.

Binturong

They look fierce, but seem really chill? They're nocturnal so maybe they're sleepy. They also smell funny! People describe it like popcorn?

Timelapse, I barely had a plan. I redid a lot of things 😵‍💫 I felt he looked sad with just the white bg

An African civet (Civettictis civetta) by the Bahr Dikere in Zakouma National Park, Chad

I do! That’s a masked palm civet (Paguma larvata)!

Sure, this particular guy doesn’t have much of a mask. But that’s because masked palm civets come in an impressive variety of coat colors! Here are a few of them:

Civetboard