July 10, 2004
"Fossa Anatomy"
by Alberto Gonzalez Gallina

The Fossa is Madagascar’s top predator, a catlike viverrid that might resemble an ancestral predator, one of the early miacids. When you first watch a Fossa, its quite a shocking experience. Imagine this slender muscular body build, a long tail meant for balance, this razor sharp claws like knives or climbing spikes and its particular head. Its head, with those penetrating eyes, rounded ears, huge whiskers and big nose, all crying out loud, this guys have serious keen senses. The whole Fossa had evolved for one single porpouse, being this precise killing machine, a natural born killer. Is like watching the cradle of the carnivore family in one single animal. Their reduced dentition and big carnassial molars compared to the other viverrids and its non retractile claws, together with all the other catlike features, makes you wonder the really how amazing evolution can be, working in a similar way on this viverrid than it did in the feline family in the rest of the world. Isolation and empty niches create and astonishing frame for analogue life forms. As a conclusion, you could say, the Fossa is one of nature’s masterpieces.