Card #018 · Mammals
Fossa
Cryptoprocta ferox
Rare VU · Vulnerable
Field notes
- Classification
- Order Carnivora · Family Eupleridae
- Range
- Madagascar
- Size
- 70–80 cm (28–31 in) body
- Weight
- 5.5–8.6 kg (12–19 lb)
- Lifespan
- ~20 yrs (captive)
- Diet
- Lemurs, tenrecs, birds
Most Notable
Madagascar's largest carnivore, and the only predator that can take adults of every lemur species on the island. Its ankles rotate far enough to run down a trunk head first.
It looks like a small cougar and is not a cat at all. Every carnivore native to Madagascar, the fossa included, descends from one mongoose-like animal that reached the island from Africa around twenty million years ago and then radiated with nothing to compete against.
Its ankles are the trick. They rotate far enough that the fossa can grip a trunk and come down it head first, or launch itself from one tree to the next, which is how an animal this size hunts lemurs in the canopy.
It keeps no schedule. The fossa is cathemeral, meaning it is active in both daylight and darkness rather than being strictly nocturnal or diurnal.
The Red List moved it to Vulnerable on a population decline of at least 30 percent between 1987 and 2008, driven by forest clearance. Roughly 2,500 animals are estimated within protected areas.
The twenty year lifespan on this card is what they reach in captivity. Nobody has established how long a wild fossa lives.
Range: Forested Madagascar, from the coast to the highlands.