The next has been formed into a separate genus, Urva; the teeth are blunter than in Herpestes.
[NO. 244. URVA CANCRIVORA.]
The Crab-eating Mungoose (Jerdon's No. 134).
HABITAT.—South-east Himalayas, Assam, and Burmah.
| Urva cancrivora. |
DESCRIPTION.—"General colour fulvous iron-grey, inner fur woolly, outer of long straggling lax hairs, generally ringed with black, white, and fulvous; in some the coat has a variegated aspect; in others a uniform tawny tint prevails, and in a few dark rusty brown mixed with grey is the prevalent hue; abdomen brown; limbs blackish-brown; a white stripe on either side of the neck from the ear to the shoulder; tail rufous or brown, with the terminal half rufous" (Jerdon). Gray's account is: "black grizzled hairs with a very broad white sub-terminal ring; a white streak on the side of the neck; legs and feet black; tail ashy red at the end."
SIZE.—Head and body, 18 inches; tail, 11 inches.
Somewhat aquatic in its habits, living on frogs and crabs. It has two anal glands, from which it can squirt a foetid secretion. It is the only mungoose mentioned in Blyth's 'Catalogue of the Mammals of Burmah,' but there are at least two more, and probably some of the Malayan species are yet to be found in Tenasserim.
This is the next and last section in the order I have adopted, of the land Carnivora, and contains the typical family Canis. All the animals that we shall have to deal with might and would be by some authors brought into this one genus, the only others recognised by them being the two African genera, Megalotis and Lycaon, the long-eared fox and the hyæna-dog, and the Nyctereutes or racoon-dog of Northern China and Amoorland. But although all our Indian species might be treated of under the one genus Canis, it will be better to keep to the separation adopted by Jerdon, and classify the wolves and jackals under Canis, and the foxes under Vulpes. As regards the wild dog of India, its dentition might warrant its being placed in a separate genus, but after all the name chosen for it is but merely a difference in sound, the two being the same thing in Latin and Greek.