If you slowly and silently walk through the forests of Tanay late at night and shine a light into the trees, high in the branches you may find an intelligent and agile teddy bear looking back at you – the Philippine Palm Civet, or “musang”.

Seeing a musang is a special treat, as there are very few “carnivores”, or meat-eating mammals, on the Philippines Islands. They are one of the more intelligent animals you can find, so usually they’ll see you before you see them! But sometimes they come around the farm looking for scraps or fruit to eat, and then you might get lucky and spot one in the dark.

A strange fact about civets is that they are part of the process of making coffee alamid, also known as “civet coffee”. Civets love to eat the red fruit of the coffee plant, and someone figured out that after the civet poops out the beans, its stomach juices have changed the flavors of the coffee! Coffee made from the coffee beans found in civet poop is one of the most expensive in the world. Unfortunately, in some places people have decided that instead than going through the hard work of collecting civet poop, they will keep civets in small cages and force feed them large amounts of coffee beans for an easy profit. A growing number of civets are being taken from the wild and abused in this manner.