Carnivores | Carnivora

Families in this order

• Mustelids | Mustelidae13 speciesA long tubular body on short legs: that shape lets a weasel follow a vole down its own tunnel, but it gives much surface for little bulk, so heat leaks away without pause. No species hibernates, therefore, and the smallest must eat a substantial share of their own weight every day. The feet carry five toes with fixed claws; the badger walks on the whole sole and digs an extensive sett with it, the otter has webbing. Glands at the anus give off a penetrating scent, used to mark and, in the polecats, also to defend. The killing bite is aimed at the neck. In part of the family the fertilised egg lies floating in the womb for months before the pregnancy begins, so that mating is in summer and birth not until the following spring. The fur is dense and in the otter holds a layer of air; stoats in the north turn white in winter.
• Bears | Ursidae2 speciesThe heaviest land carnivores, with a massive body, a short tail and plantigrade feet that set the whole sole down; the five toes carry long non-retractile claws used for digging and climbing rather than as weapons. The shearing action of the carnivore's teeth has largely disappeared in this family: the cheekteeth are broad and flat-crowned and grind berries, roots, nuts and insects, which make up most of the menu for most bears. Smell is by far the leading sense. The gait is a slow amble, but they climb and swim well and can run hard over a short distance. Winter is spent in a den in a deep rest from which the animal can be roused and in which body temperature falls only a few degrees; the cubs are born in the middle of that period, small, blind and naked. The polar bear is the exception: out on the sea ice it has become a full meat-eater again.
• Dogs, wolves and foxes | Canidae9 speciesBuilt to wear their prey down: long legs, a deep narrow chest and digitigrade feet with four bearing toes and blunt claws that cannot be drawn in and that give grip but are useless as weapons. The muzzle is long, and behind the shearing teeth the rear cheekteeth stay broad and cusped, so the family can also live on fruit, beetles and refuse — a set of teeth that both cuts and crushes. Smell is the leading sense, over a very large and finely furnished surface, and the erect ears turn independently. There is a great deal of signalling: howling, barking, yapping and whining, and beyond that scent marking with urine and droppings at fixed places. Once a year a litter of blind helpless pups is born in an earth; the pair stays together, and in several species the young of the previous year help to rear them.
• Cats | Felidae7 speciesThe strictest meat-eaters of the order. The row of cheekteeth is reduced to a pair of shears: the carnassials close past one another like blades and the grinding rear molars have all but gone. The canines are long and set so that they slide between the neck vertebrae of the prey, and the short jaw brings the bite close to the hinge, where it is strongest. At rest the claws are drawn up into a sheath of skin by elastic ligaments and are only thrown out by muscle at the moment of seizing, so that they do not wear and stay sharp. The foot is digitigrade and set on pads: the walk is silent. The eyes face forward, with a mirroring layer behind the retina and, in the smaller species, a slit pupil. There is no long chase but an ambush: a stalk to within a few metres and then one short, fast rush. Apart from the lion, every species lives alone on a territory of its own, marked out.
• Mongooses | Herpestidae2 speciesSlender, low-slung carnivores with a pointed muzzle, small round ears set low on the head and closable, and a well-furred tail thick at the base and tapering to a point. The coat looks grizzled because every guard hair is banded light and dark. The five toes carry long blunt claws that cannot be drawn in and that serve chiefly for digging. The pupil is horizontal — a sign that these are animals of the day, unusual among small carnivores. At the anus lies a roomy gland pouch with which boulders and tree trunks are marked. They are strikingly quick in reaction and deal as a matter of habit with dangerous food: snakes, scorpions, and eggs hurled backwards between the hind legs against a stone. The two species of this area live singly or in a loose family party.
• Hyaenas | Hyaenidae1 speciesA sloping back — the forelegs are longer than the hind — and a stiff mane along the spine, raised in threat and making the animal look far larger. The head is heavy, with a short broad muzzle and extraordinarily strong chewing muscles. Behind the still-shearing carnassials the front cheekteeth stand as thick conical crushers with which limb bones are cracked; that lets a hyaena use a carcass other predators have left, and the bone meal turns the droppings chalk white as they dry. The forefeet are larger than the hind and carry blunt claws. They are nocturnal and cover great distances at a tireless, angular trot. At the anus lies a large gland pouch, everted to paste a scent onto grass stems and twigs. The species of this area lives alone or in pairs, along the southern and eastern fringe.
• Civets and genets | Viverridae1 speciesLong-bodied, low-legged carnivores with a pointed muzzle, a spotted coat and a long tail bearing a series of sharply drawn dark rings that takes up nearly half the animal's length. Unlike most carnivores outside the cats, the claws can be drawn in, and that makes these animals excellent climbers: they run along branches with the tail as a balance beam and come down a trunk head first. The pupil is a vertical slit, which points to an animal of the night, and the whiskers are very long. Between anus and genitals lies a gland sac yielding a strong-smelling secretion with which fixed points in the territory are marked. The menu is broad: rodents, birds, lizards, insects and fruit. They live singly. The genet of south-western Europe was almost certainly brought over from north-western Africa centuries ago.
• Raccoons and coatis | Procyonidae2 speciesPlantigrade omnivores with five toes on each foot and curved, non-retractile claws. In the raccoon the palm and fingers are set with an exceptionally dense field of touch corpuscles: it finds its food by feel in shallow water and under stones, and that sense of touch is sharper than its sight — in water it grows more sensitive still, which explains the familiar 'washing'. The hind foot can be turned far enough for the animal to come down a tree head first. The tail is long and ringed. The teeth are an omnivore's: the shearing action is blunted and the cheekteeth are broad. The coati departs from the pattern with a long, highly mobile snout for rooting through leaf litter, and with females and young that travel in bands while the adult males live alone. Both European species are American in origin and escaped from captivity.
• True seals | Phocidae8 speciesCarnivores that returned to the water and went so far that they can barely travel on land: the hind limbs are fixed pointing backwards and cannot be turned under the body, so a seal hitches along the beach on its belly. In the water those same hind feet are the engine, sweeping from side to side. There is no external ear — hence "earless seals" — and the nostrils close by themselves. A thick layer of blubber under the skin insulates, gives buoyancy and stores food; the coat matters little and is shed all at once each year. In a dive the heartbeat drops to a few beats a minute and blood is routed to heart and brain. The pup is born on land or on ice, drinks milk that is up to half fat, and is independent within days or weeks; the mother usually eats nothing meanwhile. The whiskers are not a detail but the hunting instrument: they read the wake a swimming fish leaves behind, long after it has passed.
• Walrus | Odobenidae1 speciesOne species, and unmistakable in every part. The upper canines grow throughout life into tusks half a metre long and more, in both sexes; they serve to haul the animal onto the ice and to settle who is strongest, and not for digging. The digging is done by the muzzle, with a few hundred short thick whiskers dragged over the sea floor to find shellfish; the flesh is sucked out and the shell left behind. Unlike the true seals, the hind limbs can be folded under the body, so a walrus walks over the ice instead of hitching. In old bulls the skin is centimetres thick and heavily callused on the neck; underwater the animal looks pale as the blood withdraws, and on the ice it flushes pink as soon as it returns.