Masked Palm Civet Invades Tokyo!
On Sunday evening, policemen at the NTV Tower in Tokyo encountered a wild beast, managing to subdue and net the creature after the great struggle shown in the following video:
What was the animal? One of the bystanders in the video shouts out, “It’s a tanuki,” but she is quite wrong. It’s actually a Masked Palm Civet! Masked Palm Civets are a cat-like mammal, but they look more like a cross between a tanuki and a ferret. They are commonly found in the jungles of South-East Asia, but they somehow made their way to Japan in the early 20th century. As humans continue to destroy the natural areas around Tokyo, the civets have been driven into the city. According to the report, Masked Palm Civets have been spotted all around Tokyo, including some in the heart of Shibuya. This unfortunate situation will lead to even more confrontations between the civets and Tokyoites, and we can only expect that more police officers will be biten in the line of duty while capturing these animals.
