Owsten's Palm Civet

Chrotogale owstoni

Status: Endangered, due to habitat fragmentation and hunting, largely for consumption of wild meat.

The Ben Cao Gang Mu ("Great Pharmacopoeia") is an encyclopedia of traditional medicine and natural history edited by Li Shizen, a Chinese herbalist in the 16th century. The books were a combination of bestiary and herbal lore, drawing from poetry as much as it did medical knowledge of the time. The Taiping Yulan, an encyclopedia from the 10th century that was commissioned by a Song Dynasty emperor, and the Ben Cao Gang Mu both mention and describe the feng li, meaning "wind leopard cat".

As with many creatures in ancient bestiaries, the authors never laid eyes on the actual beast, and so they drew conclusions as to the physical reality of the subjects. If based on actual fauna, one modern interpretation is that the feng li as described and illustrated in various manuscripts is a palm civet.

Feng li is described in Ben Cao Gang Mu as having the aspect of a small, green and black monkey patterned with leopard spots. They feed on spiders and mastic (resin from a mastic tree). They are dormant in the daylight hours, but at night, they come to life, jumping high through the treetops and sailing upon the wind like night birds. They hold a stick or a stiff stalk of grass, and can point this wand at other animals to paralyze them to stillness. If a human were to snatch this wand and point at another human, the latter would be compelled to the bidding of the former.

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