Fishing Cat Trail

Furry legs knee-deep in water and watchful eyes scanning the water surface, the fishing cat is a picture of intent concentration when stalking its prey. Then, all of a sudden, a splash! The cat has plunged in but before you know it, the drama is over.

The feline emerges, victorious, with its fishy quarry firmly between its canines. Be patient and you, too, may be rewarded, not with fish, but with a display of the fishing cats’ spectacular skill.

Pangolins, the world’s most trafficked animals, are still to be found in urbanised Singapore. Adaptable to degraded forests but often derailed by habitat fragmentation, more are turning up as roadkill.

That would had been the fate of Anggun, had she not been discovered and rescued by MWR staff. A hit-and-run victim, she’s made a full recovery save for a slight limp.

Next to the pangolins, you'll find a thatch-roofed kampung (Malay for ‘village’) hut, which is where the common palm civets are housed. The exhibit comes replete with trees and connecting vines, designed for our civets to display their dexterity in climbing.

These civets are common in Singapore, even in urban areas where it lives in the roof spaces of buildings and forages in gardens. They travel via a network of telephone wires, poles and trees.