Where to see a fossa in Madagascar, with luck

The fossa is Madagascar's largest native carnivore: a slim, red-brown hunter of lemurs, about 1.4 m from nose to tail tip, that looks like a small puma but isn't a cat. It lives in forests over most of the island, and Kirindy Forest, about 60 km north-east of Morondava, is a practical place for a chance of a sighting. October overlaps the mating season described by wildlife researchers and usually fits a western trip. Even then a sighting comes with luck.

Kirindy is on the way from the Avenue of the Baobabs to the Tsingy de Bemaraha, so all three of our western trips stop there for a night, with a guided night walk in the evening and a walk in the forest the next morning. The fossa at the top of this page is one of Christian's own photos. Any fossa sighting happens with luck.

What is a fossa?

A grown male weighs about 6 to 9 kg and a female 5.5 to 6.8 kg. The head and body measure 70 to 80 cm, and the tail adds almost as much again, which helps it balance and brake as it moves through the trees. The coat is a plain reddish-brown with no spots or stripes, the head is more like a mongoose's than a cat's, and the large eyes face forward.

It isn't a cat. The fossa belongs to the Eupleridae, a family of carnivores that lives only on Madagascar, and its closest relatives anywhere else are the mongooses. The cat-like body evolved separately. One name causes confusion: Fossa fossana is a different animal, the Malagasy civet or fanaloka, a relative of under 2 kg.

It hunts by day and by night and climbs well. Much of its life happens away from people, which is why a fossa encounter comes with luck. The IUCN lists it as Vulnerable, and habitat loss and hunting threaten it.

Kirindy Forest: a practical place to try

Kirindy is a forest reserve, not a national park: roughly 10,000 to 12,500 hectares of dry deciduous forest on flat, sandy ground, around two hours' drive from Morondava, mostly on dirt. The German Primate Center runs a research station there, and a good deal of what is known about wild fossas comes from studies in this forest.

Kirindy is a sensible forest to choose if a chance of a fossa sighting matters to you. It is an established research site and a stop on our western itineraries. Allowing time in one forest is more useful than hurrying between reserves, but there are no published visitor odds we can turn into a percentage.

When to go: the mating season

Fossas have an unusual mating system, with mating often taking place on a branch in a tree. Sources give slightly different months: Animal Diversity Web names September and October, while San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance gives October to December in the wild. October is the overlap, rather than a precise timetable for every animal.

For travellers, access matters just as much. Our western trips run in the dry season. The Grand Tsingy has its own opening calendar and can be affected by the first rains. If you want both the Tsingy and a chance of a fossa sighting, the first half of October is a practical period to discuss with us.

Earlier dry-season trips still include Kirindy's daylight and night walks, and a fossa sighting remains possible with luck. In the wet season, ask about the road before building a trip around it. Our month-by-month guide covers the rest of the island.

Night walks and morning walks at Kirindy

Each of our western trips gives Kirindy an evening and the following morning.

The night walk starts in the early evening, before dinner, with a local guide. It's usually fairly short, and it's about the small animals first. Look for mouse lemurs, including Madame Berthe's, which at about 30 g is the smallest primate in the world and lives only in this corner of the west. Sportive lemurs sit at the mouths of their tree holes, chameleons sleep on the ends of twigs, and there may be owls. If you're lucky, a giant jumping rat crosses the torchlight. With luck, so does a fossa, its eyes shining orange in the beam.

Bring a head torch with a red setting and closed shoes. Follow the guide's lighting instructions and avoid shining a bright beam into an animal's eyes.

The morning walk is for Verreaux's sifakas, white with dark faces, which cross open ground in sideways hops on two legs. Red-fronted lemurs move through the trees in groups, and the birds are busiest early. You might also meet the narrow-striped mongoose, a small, Endangered carnivore that lives in family groups and occurs only between the Tsiribihina and Mangoky rivers.

Fossas can be active by day as well as after dark, so a lucky sighting needn't happen on the night walk. Our lemur safari page shows what else the forests hold.

How to behave if you're lucky enough to meet one

Give it room, and let it decide how close it comes. Stay on the trail and keep your voice down. If it moves off, let it go. Keep a bright beam out of its eyes, and don't use flash.

Never feed a fossa, and don't go along with anyone who puts out meat or scraps to draw one in for photographs. Fossas that go into villages after chickens get trapped or killed, so teaching one to link people with food does it no favours. A lucky sighting on a walk is worth more than one set up with bait. Our guide to where to see lemurs has the same rules for lemurs.

Other places where fossas live

Fossas live in nearly every kind of forest on the island, from rainforest to dry and spiny forest. Outside Kirindy, any sighting means you were lucky.

• Ankarafantsika. A national park in the dry north-west, on the RN4 between Antananarivo and Mahajanga. Madagascar National Parks lists the fossa among its animals, and its park staff can advise which circuits are operating. None of our set trips go there, but every trip can be reshaped.
• Ankarana. Madagascar National Parks lists the fossa here too. Both of our north trips spend a full day among Ankarana's limestone pinnacles and dry forest: the 11-day Northern Madagascar and the 12-day Northern Madagascar Adventure.
• The eastern rainforests. They also provide fossa habitat. A fossa on an Andasibe walk would still be a lucky day.