# The Behaviour in Captivity of the African Civet, Civettictis civetta (Schreber) > African civets are shy, solitary and active at night, so who knows how they really behave? By living with two captive pairs and five litters of kittens, Ewer and Wemmer described everything from their dung piles and perfume-gland marks to the careful way they kill snakes and why a mother civet calls her kittens rather than going to them. Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/1974-ewer-wemmer-behaviour-captivity-african-civet/ ## Citation and access - **Authors:** R. F. Ewer and C. Wemmer - **Year published:** 1974 - **Journal or source:** Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie - **Full citation:** Ewer, R. F. and Wemmer, C. 1974. The behaviour in captivity of the African civet, Civettictis civetta (Schreber). Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 34(4): 359–394. - **DOI:** 10.1111/j.1439-0310.1974.tb01809.x - **Access status:** Publisher link only - **Where to find it:** https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1974.tb01809.x ## Tags - **Species:** Mammals > African civet - **Region:** Africa > Ghana; North America > United States - **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour; Communication; Cub-rearing; Feeding; Hunting; Predation - **Methods and technology:** Descriptive statistics; Direct observation - **Data type:** New field data - **Observer qualification:** Not needed - **Discipline:** Behaviour and ecology - **Year published:** 1974 ## Detailed keywords - **Species:** Studied: African civet (Civettictis civetta): two captive pairs and five litters born to the Ghana female. Prey and food offered: mice, rats, guinea pigs, an almost full-grown domestic hen, small lizards, frogs and toads, small fish, aquatic insects, crickets, grasshoppers and termites, and snakes: file snake (Mehelya crossi, refused or barely eaten), green tree snakes (Philothamnus sp.), sand snake (Psammophis sibilans) and herald snake (Crotaphopeltis hotamboei). Comparison species discussed: domestic cat, cheetah, lion, tiger, genets (Genetta pardina and others), palm civet (Nandinia binotata), spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta), meerkat (Suricata), mongooses (Crossarchus, Helogale), fanaloka (Fossa fossa), fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox), raccoon (Procyon lotor), marsh mongoose (Atilax paludinosus), Cape clawless otter (Aonyx capensis), mulgara (Dasycercus cristicauda), rats, pigs, long-tailed weasel. - **Location and habitat:** Captivity: University of Ghana (laboratory, window-bench cage and outdoor enclosures of about 6 by 7 m with grass, shrubs and creepers), and the National Zoological Park, Washington, D.C., United States (adjoining cages of about 1.8 by 3.6 m). The Ghana pair came from the wild in a cocoa farming area of moist semi-deciduous woodland; the Washington pair came from Jersey Zoo and descended from stock from Sierra Leone. Wild birth records cited for Ghana. - **Topics:** captive behaviour; colour pattern and camouflage; neck stripe as a “bite director”; ear spots and facial markings; senses (smell, hearing, eyeshine); gaits (walk, trot, gallop); resting postures; facial expression and body carriage; crest erection (piloerection) in defensive threat; appeasement posture; vocalizations (growl, cough-spit, scream, kitten distress mew, mating miau, female sex call, contact call) with spectrographic analysis; comfort movements and grooming; allogrooming; defaecation sites and dung piles (latrines); urination and male backward urine spraying; flehmen; perfume (perineal) gland scent marking and mark height; marking of strange objects; prey capture sequence (run-away bite, bite-and-throw, bite-and-shake, killing bite, aimed head bite); handling of snakes, birds and frogs; eating from the head down; scent-rubbing on food; drinking; courtship and mating posture; oestrus; gestation and possible facultative delayed implantation; litter size and birth seasons in Ghana; development of kittens; play; freezing and climbing as escape responses; carrying of kittens; nursing, milk tread and teat ownership; mouth suckling (licking the mother’s mouth); food sharing by the mother; male parental care in captivity; evolution of cat (felid) behaviour. - **Statistics or models:** Descriptive only: counts, ranges and means (for example, flehmen and sniffing durations in the Washington male, N = 34 and N = 49), a plot of sniffing against flehmen duration, sound spectrograms, and tables of litters (Table 1) and ages at first appearance of behaviours (Table 2). No statistical tests. - **Data type:** New field data: observations of captive animals. The Ghana pair arrived at about 12 days old (born early September, year not stated; first litter born November 1970) and five litters followed between November 1970 and July 1972; received for publication December 1972. Inconsistencies in the paper: (1) the text gives the first litter’s birth as 25 November (1970), but Table 1 gives 26/11/70; (2) the text says litter 1 showed “some running and jumping from 24 days onwards”, but Table 2 gives 23 days for “Run and jump” in litter 1; (3) the English summary says the two pairs were obtained “as juveniles and at approximately 12 days old”, while the German summary says one pair was about half-grown. ## Synopsis ### 1. What they did The African civet is the largest African viverrid (the family that includes genets and civets). They are solitary, nocturnal and shy, so very little was known about their behaviour in the wild. The authors watched two pairs in captivity over several years and described their whole behaviour repertoire. - The animals. One pair, obtained as juveniles from Jersey Zoo, lived at the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C. The other pair was captured from the wild in Ghana at about 12 days old and raised by hand at the University of Ghana, first in a laboratory and later in outdoor enclosures with grass and shrubs. The Ghana female then had five litters, which the authors also followed. - What they recorded. Colour patterns, senses, gaits and postures, calls, grooming, toilet habits, scent marking, prey capture and eating, mating and reproduction, the development of the kittens, and how the parents behaved towards them. - Tests. They offered live and dead prey of many kinds (insects, mice, rats, a hen, frogs, fish, snakes), including mice and rats with the skin removed, to see how the civets attacked and ate them. They recorded calls for spectrographic analysis and filmed flehmen. ### 2. What they found Colour, senses and body language - The irregular spotted coat is very good camouflage: a civet in a clump of grass can be passed within a metre or two without being seen. - The white neck stripe may act as a “bite director”. Fights, even playful ones, are stylized “neck fencing”, with bites aimed at the side of the neck where they do little harm. - Smell is extremely acute. Food that is not moving is found by smell, not sight, even when it is in plain view. Hearing is also sharp; sight seems less important for finding prey. - Civets have few facial expressions; mood shows in body carriage. A frightened civet lowers the body and flattens the crest. In defensive threat they raise the long hair of the crest (up to 105 mm) and turn side-on, so they look much bigger. - An appeasement posture (quickly lying down on the side) stopped attacks between the familiar male and female. Of 16 cases, only 4 showed the belly. Calls - Three threat calls (growl, cough-spit, scream), a kitten distress mew, a miau during mating, a possible female sex call, and a contact call that sounds like “ha-ha-ha” said with the lips closed. - Young kittens always answered a contact call and moved towards the caller. The mother answered her kittens’ calls but waited for them to come to her, and used the call to summon them. Toilet habits and scent marking - Each animal used its own fixed spot every night to leave droppings, so a dung pile would build up. They liked to defaecate from a height: the male climbed part way up a sloping log, the female went to the top. Kittens chose their own sites close to their favourite sleeping place. - Females and young urinated straight down from a slight squat. The adult male sprayed urine backwards between the hind legs onto shrubs, grass tufts and other upright objects; the Washington male often kicked backwards as he walked. On smelling fresh female urine the male showed flehmen (lifting the head with lips parted). The Washington male did so 32 times after sniffing the female’s urine. - Civets mark with a large perfume gland between the anus and the genitals, squatting on flat surfaces or backing up with the tail raised against upright ones. Because of this, the height of a mark reflects the size of the animal: the Ghana male’s marks were about 5 cm higher than the female’s. Males marked far more often, and mostly on upright objects; females mostly marked flat surfaces. Young animals only squatted. - A new object, or one carrying a stranger’s scent, was almost always marked by the next morning, but only after the civets had become used to it. Hunting and eating - The paws are not used to catch prey. Attacks build up from a quick “run-away bite”, to “bite-and-throw” (often with a leap in the air), to “bite-and-shake” so violent that it broke a 42 cm snake’s backbone in 6 places, and finally a killing bite. Once the prey was disabled, a carefully aimed bite to the head often finished it. - Unfamiliar prey, large prey and prey that fought back were treated with great caution. A young female took 5 minutes to make her first bite on a crouching rat. Experienced adults killed rats without hesitation. - Snakes were first bitten near the tail, and the civet leapt aside after each throw to avoid a strike. File snakes, which smell unpleasant, were attacked hesitantly and hardly eaten. - Lacking sharp cutting teeth, civets hold food down with the forepaws and tear pieces off with the incisors. Mammals, snakes and large lizards were eaten from the head down, even when skinned. Frogs were opened from the belly and the insides eaten; toads were usually refused. With experience, civets learned to strip meat off the large wing and tail feathers rather than swallowing them. - Small fish, frogs and water insects were caught in the water dish with a quick scooping bite. - Before or while eating, civets often rubbed their chin, neck and shoulder on strong-smelling or slightly rotten animal food, and especially on the guts of fresh kills. Fruit was never rubbed. The male also rubbed on mosquito repellent and people’s arms and legs. The purpose of this rubbing remains unclear. - Grass eaten in quantity passed through almost unchanged, with the animals’ own hair concentrated in it, which suggests it may stop hairballs forming. Mating and breeding - The female’s heats lasted from one to six nights. She signalled readiness by running past the male to make him chase her, then crouched in a cat-like mating posture. In the two matings seen in full, the male stayed mounted for about 40 seconds after the likely moment of intromission, and 70 seconds in all. - The female was mature at about one year and had her first litter at about 14 months. Litters were of 2 or 3 kittens, and she could have two litters a year. Births in Ghana (captive and wild) were recorded in at least eight different months, so breeding is not strictly seasonal. - Gestation was about 65 days for two litters but 79, 80 and 81 days for the three litters conceived after a miscarriage or the loss of a litter. Kittens - Kittens are born furred, with eyes open or opening within a few days. They began exploring outside the nest at 17 or 18 days, ate earth and first took raw meat at about 3 weeks, and froze or crept into cover when alarmed from 9 to 18 days old. - Young kittens alarmed by a sudden noise sometimes climbed a fence post or the cage wire and froze there. - First kills of live prey followed the same cautious sequence as adults; experience simply brought confidence. - In litter 1, each kitten kept to its own teat (the male used the left teat 25 of 27 times; the female the right teat all 27 times), but this “teat ownership” was established later than in domestic cats. - Kittens licked their mother’s mouth for a short time at 35 to 40 days old, just before she first shared food with them. - The mother did not bring whole prey. She carried food towards the kittens, called them, left scraps, and later stopped eating once they arrived. No regurgitation was found. Kittens were weaned at 14 to 20 weeks. - In captivity the father became tolerant: kittens rested against him and he licked them, behaviour the authors think unlikely in the wild. ### 3. What they concluded - The general coat pattern is camouflage, while the white markings (neck stripe, ear spots, muzzle) may have social functions. - Smell and hearing matter most for finding prey. Civets are cautious killers that disable prey by biting and shaking and only then risk a bite to the head. - Because the mother’s help with solid food is so simple, kittens depend on a long period of nursing while they learn to catch prey themselves. Teat ownership may matter most late in nursing, when kittens have teeth and could hurt each other. - Licking at the mother’s mouth may be a signal that the kittens now need solid food. - The longer gestations after a lost litter suggest a possible facultative delayed implantation, but the authors stress this is not direct evidence and needs further study. - Several civet behaviours (the cat-like mating posture, climbing to escape, the aimed head bite as a final blow, simple food sharing) may help explain how the more specialized behaviour of cats evolved, and suggest civets became ground-dwelling relatively recently. ### 6. Other technologies, skills or innovations - Sound spectrograms of the kitten distress mew and contact call, giving durations and frequencies of each note. - Measurements of nose height during flehmen taken from cine film. - Simple tests with skinned and head-skinned mice and rats to see whether skin and fur guide the direction of eating. - Searching droppings for mouse hair to check whether the mother regurgitated food for her kittens. ### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations) _These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._ - Several behaviours described here leave signs a tracker may find: dung piles at fixed sites near resting places, often deposited from a raised spot such as a log; male urine sprayed backwards onto upright plants; and perfume-gland marks on upright objects whose height reflects the size of the animal that left them. - Feeding remains may also be telling: prey eaten from the head down, frogs opened from the belly with the insides eaten, toads left uneaten, and large feathers stripped of meat rather than cut off. - These observations come from captive animals, so how far they hold in the wild would need to be checked against field signs. ## Cite this summary Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: The Behaviour in Captivity of the African Civet, Civettictis civetta (Schreber) (Ewer and Wemmer, 1974). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/1974-ewer-wemmer-behaviour-captivity-african-civet/