Malabar Coast part of this narrow coast is referred to as the South Western Ghats moist deciduous forests. The Malabar Coast, throughout recorded history from about 3000BC, had been a major trading center in commerce with Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Jerusalem and the Arab world. Its most famous ports (both defunct and functional) were 'Naura (Kannur), Balita (Vizhinjam), Kochi (formerly Ernakulam), Calicut (formerly Kozhikode [see List of renamed Indian cities and states]), and Mangalore, the most famous of them being Muziris, and the Oddeway Torre settlement (part of Danish India) have served as centers of the Indian Ocean trade, for centuries. Because
Malabar large-spotted civet digital pads form submarginal patches; the skin of the plantar pad is naked in front and at the sides. There are remnants of the metatarsal pads on the hind foot as two naked spots, the external a little above the level of the hallux, the internal considerably higher. A male individual kept in the Zoological Gardens of Trivandrum in the 1930s measured in head and body with a long tail and weighed . In the 19th century, the Malabar civet occurred throughout the Malabar coast from the latitude of Honore to Cape Comorin. It inhabited the forests and richly wooded