Fossa

The Fossa, Cryptoprocta ferox, is the largest surviving carnivore - indeed the largest surviving native mammal - on the island of Madagascar.  It is a relative of the Falanouc, willemsvdmerwe.deviantart.com/… but much more carnivorous.  Fossas mainly hunt lemurs, but will eat lots of other things as well.  They are excellent climbers and even mate in trees!  Their main strategy in hunting lemurs is forcing them down to the ground where they can catch and overpower them more easily.  They hunt by day and by night.  They are semi-digitigrade: in trees they mostly walk on the full soles of their feet, but on the ground (as here) they walk on their toes.   They can also retract their claws, but don't have sheaths to conceal them as cats do.  Although they're very cat-like, they are more closely related to mongooses.  All the native carnivores of Madagascar are descended from animals that somehow made it from the African continent to the island about 20 million years ago.  Since that time, they've evolved into several diferent species.  The fossa can reach a bodyweight of a bit over ten kg; there used to occur another species on the island that was twice as large.  Watercolour.