The Malay civet has black spots on tawny-to-gray fur and a black-and-white banded tail. It hides in dense cover by day and is active at night.
Its fur ranges from tawny to gray, with black spots. Black-and-white bands mark the sides of the neck and the tail.
In Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, researchers fitted GPS collars to nine adult Malay civets and recorded nocturnal locations every hour. From October 2013 to August 2015, collars were deployed for 27–187 days. It was the first reported satellite-collar study of a viverrid and tested a way to record movements of little-known wild carnivores.
Among the seven civets with retrieved data, GPS fix success averaged 58.1% and ranged from 22% to 88.3%. Even so, the collars collected an average of 16 times more locations per deployment day than earlier VHF studies. Before fieldwork, two generations of collars were tested under semi-open canopy for fix success and location accuracy. The tested collars weighed 65–70 g, or 1.3–1.4% of average adult body weight.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
The authors presented satellite collars as a viable method for detailed ecological studies of civets. Knowing where wild animals travel helps describe habitat use and supplies information for conservation planning.