Nocturnal Tarap Eater

One of the animals that come to eat the tarap fruits at night in my backyard that I was able to photograph is the Common Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). Possibly another species of civet - the Malay Civet (Viverra tangalunga) also does so though I've never seen it.

A nocturnal omnivore, the palm civet hunts alone. They are expert climbers and spend most of their lives in trees. They eat small vertebrates, insects, ripe fruits and seeds. They are very fond of palm sap, therefore their common name. The sap is used by natives to make a sweet liquor called "toddy", which gives the palm civet its other common name. The palm civet is also fond of coffee cherries. They eat the outer fruit and the coffee beans pass through their digestive tract. An expensive coffee called kopi luwak is supposedly made from these coffee beans. Kopi luwak is said to have a gamy flavor and sells for more than $100 per pound.

The Leopard Cat

The Leopard Cat Prionailurus bengalensis (synonym Felis bengalensis) is the commonest wild cat in Borneo although few people have actually seen it. This is because it is a nocturnal animal that is active only at night and spends the day in a den that may be a hollow tree, a cavity under roots or a small cave. It lives and breeds mainly in forests and secondary jungle, as well as plantations and farms near the jungle feeding on rodents, reptiles, small birds, insects, frogs and even sometimes fish – almost anything that it can catch.

It is a beautiful domestic cat-sized animal that looks very much like a mini leopard! But to see it we have to go into the jungle or drive along jungle side roads or in plantations with a bright torch or spot light. That is how I managed to get my photographs.

It looks so cute that many people are tempted to catch them to keep as pets but as everybody knows wild caught animals do not make good pets and could only be kept cruelly imprisoned in a cage. However if you still like to keep a domesticared mini leopard in your home it is possible to buy a Bengal Cat which is a commercially produced by interbreeding a house cat with a P. bengalensis. You may be interested to look at this link:

http://www.cat-world.com.au/BengalBreedProfile.htm

Prionailurus bengalensis is widely distributed throughout Asia. It is found from Borneo, Java and Bali, north to southeastern Siberia and Manchuria, as far east as India, and westward to Korea and the Philippines. The subspecies found in Borneo is P. b. borneoensis.

Photo 2: This is a pair of courting cats, I was alerted to them by the loud

cat-fight sounds they made - just like those of domestic cats when they mate!

Bornean names: Wild cats in general are called kucing hutan in Malay, while the Kadazan/Dusun/Sungai call them tompu, ompu or talom. I don't know what Leopard Cat are specificly called in this dailects, would be glad if some readers could enlighten me. In Iban wild cats are mayau tebiang, I'm told, while the Muruts and Kelabits have the name tubang for leopard cat.

Teledu - the Bornean Skunk

Recently Pos Malaysia issued a set of glow-in-the-dark stamps depicting six nocturnal mammals. Unfortunately I was out of town and didn't know when the first-day-covers came out. When I enquired at the post office a few days later they had all been sold out except for the Slow Loris and Tarsier. I was hoping to buy a Malay Badger or Teludu stamp, fortunately I was able to buy one off Ebay later!

Teledu (aka Teludu, Malay Badger, Stink or Skunk Badger) is a common animal on Borneo that's more often smelled than seen! Well, for this post I have reproduced an article that I wrote and which was published in the October 2004 issue of The Planter* Magazine:

My Introduction to Mr Teledu

My introduction to this guy was, to put it mildly, a very unpleasant affair. In fact it was quite a disaster!

It was in late '75 or early '76 when I was still quite new to hunting, which among us planters and their friends in those days meant driving around in a Land Cruiser at night laden with non-stop-talking-and-laughing people and a shotgun, shining a strong spotlight at the vegetation on either side of the road hoping to find an unfortunate quarry to shoot at. We were hunting for wild boar or deer in a cocoa plantation in Tawau when we spotted a cat-sized black and white animal on the roadside looking very much like acute little piglet!

"Stop!", I said and was out of the car in a flash and in front of the animal. It did not run so tried to catch it with my bare hands...but, before I could touch it, "Psssst!" and I was engulfed in a fine mist, like being sprayed with an aerosol can! "Yuuuuuaaack!", I screamed as I was overpowered by the foulest stink I had ever smelled in my life still not knowing what had hit me. The others in the car were equally ignorant and did not know what had happened but almost instantaneously the smell reached them in the vehicle! And everybody went "Arrggg!" and were making vomitting sounds!

It took quite a while for us to realise that some kind of skunk had used its weapon on me and that I had taken a direct hit mostly on the front of my shirt! Now there was a problem! My colleagues had a stinking person that they did not want to have as a passenger! I tried to get rid of the smell but even though I took off my shirt and threw it away I still smelled as bad as before. what I needed was a bath! So in the end I got my sIrirt back and they grudgingly let me ride home with them on the back of the Land Cruiser!

When I reached home (estate bachelor quarters) my dog barked at me and so did all the dogs in the neighbourhood. I rushed into the bathroom and tried to wash the smell off using up the whole 200-litre drum of water and almost a complete cake of toilet soap. But the smell still persisted though it was now much fainter and I could go to sleep. In the morning at dawn muster even though I could not smell anything (through my now desensitised nose) my colleagues looked at me curiously and the workers seemed to be avoiding me the whole day. I also washed my affected clothes, put them out in the sun and left them out day and night but the perfume still lingered even after one whole week! And the dog would still bark at the clothes if you showed them to him!

It was only after many years that I found out what that animal was. In those days there were no reference books on the local fauna at all, even if there were it would not have been available to the average person. All the while I had thought that I had had an encounter with a moonrat, an animal that was also reputed to possess an offensive stink. Today I would simply have to search the Internet with little clue-words like "smelly animal" and would have eventually found out that this terribly smelly animal was a Malay Badger aka Stink Badger or Mydaus javanensis! I even found some photos on the Net which reminded me of that night long ago!

Since then I have encountered Teledu countless times, mostly by smell. Sometimes at night you could just catch a whiff of his perfume in the air, sometimes it is so strong that all the dogs around barked and I know that some unfortunate victim (dog, maybe) had got a dose of what I got long long ago. I have also seen him when out hunting, but by now I knew better and always gave him a wide berth. I still hope to photograph him, alive and not as the roadkill that I often come across! When the wind is blowing in the right direction, I can sometimes smell a roadkill a kilometer before I see its crushed body on the road, and wonder whether the driver of the car was aware of what he had hit?

Recent photo of a dead Teledu on the road.

*Monthly magazine of the Incorporated Society of Planters in Malaysia.

Pangolin - Eater of Ants

To most Borneans the meat of wild animals used to be a natural and  a considerable part of daily fare, but today with the near-decimation of our jungles, bushmeat (a term that seems to have gained popularity nowadays) is harder to come by and is still a very welcome occasional treat. One particularly relished meat was that of the pangolin (sometimes called the scaly anteater) which in the old days were quite common in jungles as well as in rubber and cocoa plantations. (This photo of a mother with young riding piggy-back on her tail was taken in a cocoa plantation in Tawau around 1980)

In those days hunters do not go out to hunt pangolins in particular, usually their quarry were larger animals like the sambar deer (payau), muntjak (kijang) or wild pigs. Pangolins were sort of  like “side-catch” together with civets (musang), pelandoks and the equally tasty porcupines. People also take the occasional pangolin that they accidentally met. At this rate of “harvesting” there was little danger of wiping out any species.

However when people are overcome by greed, species like the pangolin are all in danger and become threatened with extinction. After having over-exploited their own pangolins to the point of virtual extinction in their regions, the Chinese are buying these animals from other countries where different species are found. All too often we are bombarded by the media with news of truckloads of pangolins being seized at national boundaries by wildlife enforcement people – truckloads – hundreds of these poor animals being sent to their slaughter. These reports were only of those cases when the enforcers were lucky, one dreads to think of those that got away, how many thousands were and are still being taken?

Borneo is not spared this illegal activity, and although we hear less about it it doesn’t mean that there is less threat here. Here’s a recent Sabah case – see the attached newspaper clipping. (Click it to see a larger image and read the newspaper report.)

Personally, not so long ago I have heard of illegal wildlife procurers going around oil palm plantations in the East Coast of Sabah offering up to RM60 per kilo of live pangolin to workers. When I got wind of this I immediately told my staff and workers that anyone caught dealing with these criminals risk immediate dismissal.

I have no objection to people catching (non-protected) wild animals in plantations and farms for their own dinner, but doing so for financial profit (supporting illegal trafficking) at the expence of the animal is definitely not acceptable. I admit that I have tasted stewed pangolins in the past and unashamedly totally enjoyed it (I can tell you it tastes like porcupine, which is much nicer than chickens!), but those were the days when it seemed it would take another Ice Age to make these animals extinct!

Here are some facts about the species of pangolin found in our region:

Species name: Manis javanica

Common English name: Sunda Pangolin or Javan, also sometimes Malayan Pangolin

Local names: Tenggiling (Malay), bulukun or mangkotong (Kadazan/Dusun), I think it's called bulukun in Murut also, while in Iban it's Tenggiling. Please correct me if I am wrong. In Chinese it is chuan san jia 穿山甲 which roughly means mountain-digging amour!

Borneo's Own Big Cat

The caption under a small photo of a clouded leopard on the index pages of the October 2007 issue of the National Geographic, “A New Species”, was a little misleading. However further inside the magazine is the full explanation and a full length photo of the feline together with a map showing (somewhat optimistically, IMHO) the extent of the remaining rain forests on Borneo.

Neofelis diardi is not exactly a new species as it was first described by a zoologist 184 long years ago in 1823. However later taxonomists demoted this cat to sub-species status, i.e. they thought this cat was merely a race of the species Neofelis nebulosa which are found all over Asia ranging from Nepal through Eastern China to Southeast Asia including Sumatra and Borneo. Thus those Borneo, and Sumatra, were classified under Neofelis nebulosa diardi until now when new detailed analysis shows that, in spite of very similar appearance, they are genetically vastly different from their mainland cousins.

While we think this calls for a celebration, we also mourn the fact that the rain forests of our great island where these magnificent cats and countless other animals live, are disappearing fast! The so-called Heart of Borneo set aside by three countries that share it is indeed being set aside FOR the cultivation of oil and bio-fuel production with each of these participating countries seemingly trying to outrace each other to “develope” (read “destroy”) the land.

This photo of a bored and unhappy captive animal was taken at the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park in Kota Kinabalu. I accept that some animals need to be captured for various legitimate reasons, including for display to educate the public but I strongly oppose capturing and displaying animals sorely for entertainment and financial gains. Though sometimes it’s difficult to judge and draw a line…

The common English name for this cat would probably be Bornean Clouded Leopard or Island Clouded Leopard (to include Sumatra). Anyway the many natives of Borneo have their own name for it: Mondou/Inanasad/Nanansad/Tangangansad (Kadazandusun); Enkuli (Iban); Lakuing (Brunei); Kuleh (Kayan); Kuir (Kelabit, Lundayeh); Tantanion (Murut). In Malay it’s Harimau Dahan or Rimau Dahan.