Contents

Dugong

Steller's Sea Cow

Last Tasmanian

Dolphins

Wild Pig

Monkey

Bats 

Colugo

Squirrel

Tarsier

Palm Civet

Apologia

Dujung - Dugong

I've never been on a small sailing ship, eaten hard tack and weevilly biscuit, and avoided the attentions of the 'Rum, Bum & Buggery Boys' for any length of time at all, but I don't think I could have ever met one of these animals and mistaken it for a mermaid.

Dugongs are the ultimate vegetarians. They live on losay, the sea grass that grows in every shallow sandy sea lagoon from Durban to Brisbane.

Or, at least, they did.

They are such big, lazy, dumb animals that they've been massacred by the thousand - by us. Even now, their American cousins, manatees, are being mortally wounded daily by speedboats and jet-skis.

But dugongs don't have big soulful eyes, and they're not cuddly. So tough luck, dugongs, your time is up. 

The dugong's survival is not helped by a lengthy reproduction cycle of thirteen months, and a gap of 3 to 5 years between one birth and another. (Something like humans, but not quite as rampant breeders).

Probably the rarest living sea mammal of all, they still survive in pockets, all around the Indian Ocean to the western parts of the Pacific. 

Recently, Bahrain has introduced a law protecting its dugongs, and refuges have been set up on the offshore islands of Kenya and Tanzania. There are even a few dugongs left in the Philippines, off Palawan and on the east coast of Mindanao.

A small dugong was found dead at Santa Fe, just up the coast from my town, General Luna, in 1996. The lagoon fronting that small village (and the one in General Luna) still have seagrass beds, and would formerly (before too many people arrived) have been ideal habitats for dugong. 

Friends of Boat Bay

Dugong mother nursing baby from a teat just  by its 'armpit'.

Friends of Boat Bay

Dugongs are gregarious creatures and tend to move around in herds of up to 50 individuals.

Early settlers recall that the herds used to make such a noise when disturbed at night that people couldn't sleep. Sadly their numbers are now so depleted that the population south of Cooktown  (Queensland, Australia) is considered to be endangered.

Krieger's ...Weapons and Armor of the Philippine Islands

This picture puzzled me - it's a barong knife from the Sulu Islands 'with a silver-sheathed hardwood handle, and a pommel made from carved dugong ivory'. Then I found out that male dugongs do actually have a pair of incisor teeth - otherwise their 'teeth' are flat keratinous plates for grinding seagrass

 
This stuff may look to you like an average badly kept lawn, but to a dugong, it's heaven - losay - seagrass about 1-2 metres down in a shallow sandy lagoon - perfect grazing.

Geographer on the Kiwai Coast

Male dugong incisor teeth

Nor have I ever tasted dugong. But it's a large sea-grass eating mammal, and it has a lot of fat; so it has much in common with Jersey or Guernsey cows, who are often fed on seaweed, produce the very richest creamy milk, and are not at all bad to eat. 

I think, since I am at least as endangered as they are, I would like to try a dugong one day.

Anyone who caught a dugong (and it's not that difficult) would have had to share it, just to get rid of the meat surplus. That contrasts with the conventional paradigm of early human hunter-gatherers sharing a large, hard-caught, skinny buck they've just chased halfway across the Serengeti plain or the South African veldt.

African Wildlife Foundation: Wildlives

Compare the opportunity of finding a big, lazy, fat, unaggressive animal, within wading distance, with:  

"The modal scavenging opportunity at PNV is an adult kob with all marrow bones  intact, which would yield at least 1600 kcal of high-quality fat. Add to this the fatty brain, and it seems reasonable to use the round number of 2,000 kcal as an estimate of the late-access,  passive scavenging opportunity. According to the encounter rate (a find every 9 days) of this study, this late-access scavenging would yield about ...

215 calories a day in marrow and brains.

Martha Tappen:  'Deconstructing The Serengeti

See: Meat Eating - Skull & Bones Club'

Geographer on the Kiwai Coast

Capturing a dugong

Geographer on the Kiwai Coast

Butchering a dugong

Steller’s Sea Cow - A Sad Story

This sketch of Steller's Sea Cow is from the journal of Sven Waxell, "Kamchatka Expedition 1741-1742"

Sirenian International, Inc

Steller’s Sea Cow (Hydrodamalis gigas -"giant sea calf") was, until in 1768, explorer Martin Sauer entered in his journal an account of the death of the last known sea cow. It was a herbivorous, aquatic mammal related to the manatee and dugong. Georg Wilhelm Steller, a German physician and naturalist, 'discovered' them in 1741 on the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea, their last outpost - where he was shipwrecked at the time. In prehistoric times, the sea cow’s habitat (found fossil bones, at least) ranged from the rim of the North Pacific near Japan to Baja California in Mexico, that is, about the same range as kelp, its food staple.

These massive, placid creatures inhabited shallow, sandy areas along the shore. Steller wrote that they particularly liked “the mouths of the gullies and brooks, the rushing fresh water of which always attracts them in herds.” Showing no fear of humans, the sea cows allowed themselves to be touched from the shore. 

In other words they were perfect patsies.

Steller’s sea cows reached lengths of at least 7.4 m (24 ft) and may have weighed up to 10 tons. Their heads were small relative to their rotund bodies, and their tiny eyes, Steller wrote, were no larger than sheep’s eyes. Their short forelimbs ended in bristled, hooflike flippers.

This .... strongly suggests that Hydrodamalis was specialized to "walk" along in the shallows while feeding - but, of course, that commonsensical speculation is treated like rubbish when it is applied to the foot and hand anatomy of us humans, who, we all know, grew 'human' in the very dry East African and Ethiopean mid-highlands. 

Their skin was dark brown, rough as tree bark, and sometimes streaked or spotted with white.  Someone likened their skin to a car tyre.

Steller (1751) and other first-hand observers also describe Hydrodamalis as being unable to dive or even completely submerge its body. Sirenians generally have precise control of their buoyancy as a result of specializations of their skeleton, diaphragm and lungs (Domning and de Buffrénil, 1991). Increased buoyancy may have been indirectly selected for as a consequence of large body size because of corresponding increases in lung volume, intestinal volume and thickness of blubber.

There may also have been a direct selective advantage to increased buoyancy because it would have reduced the area accessible to parasites, reduced drag when swimming, reduced heat loss to the water via conduction, and allowed Hydrodamalis to enter shallower waters to feed and escape predators.  

Just so.

Steller’s sea cows fed exclusively on kelp. Lacking teeth, (teeth were absent in adults, but the keratinous rostral pads found in other sirenians were retained in Hydrodamalis), they ground the seaweed between two bony chewing plates. To satisfy their large appetites, they spent most of their time feeding with their heads down and their backs exposed above the water surface. 

By the time that Steller 'discovered' the species, there were only an estimated 1500 to 2000 sea cows. Stejneger (1887) estimated the number at less than 1500 and hypothesized that they were the last survivors of a once more numerous and widely distributed species which had been spared because man had not yet reached their last resort. 

By 1768, 27 years after it was 'discovered', the very last Steller’s sea cow had died (was killed).

And they were big: "One 7,223 pound, 26 foot sea cow could feed a crew of 33 men for one month at sea".

ADW: Hydrodamalis gigas: Information

Sirenian International, Inc

Stellar's Sea Cow

The Steller's Sea Cow - ExploreNorth

Steller's Sea Cow was one of the last giant Quaternary mammals surviving into recent times. Most developed during roughly the same time that Homo erectus has been shown to have been living from Morocco to Peking and Java.

It was 'discovered' in the Age of Enlightenment, and survived just 27 years of it.

Steller's Sea Cow, and its ancestors, H. cuestae, Dusisiren dewana, and D. jordani, were once widely distributed around the Pacific rim from Baja to Japan, where Hydrodamalis thrived until the coming of humans in the Pleistocene. 

It was only 'discovered', in its last cold island outposts, by a bunch of shipwrecked scientists. Had Steller not discovered the Sea Cow, he might have gone extinct himself.

Later, much later than Homo erectus, 'Thoroughly Modern Humans' extinguished the giant terrestrial mammal fauna of North & South America, the huge lemurs and elephant birds of Madagascar, and the massive marsupials and reptiles of Australia. These fellows on the right are standing on a massive pile of Aepyornis egg shells - somewhere along the SW coast of Madagascar.

By the end of the Pleistocene, many species of mammals had become extinct in North America, including the llama, camel, tapir, horse, and yak. 

Had the Inca, Atahualpa been able to use domesticated native America horses, the story of his fateful meeting with Cortez might have been very different.

Other large mammals, such as the mastodon, saber-toothed tiger, and ground sloth, became extinct everywhere.

Dolphin

Semporna Islands Park Survey

Speared dolphins confiscated from Badjao fishermen off North Borneo

Dolphin at exZOOberance!

Spinner dolphins doing what they should be doing in California.

There was, until very recently, a thriving dolphin 'fishery' in the San Bernardino Strait, between Samar and Luzon, in the Philippines. It's a major entry from the Pacific Ocean to the 'inland' Visayan Sea. Most of the dolphins were caught in nets, but many were blown up by explosives. In the Philippines, dolphin is a much sought-after food item, and is still sold in many fish markets. It's known as 'carabao of the sea'; its flesh is much like that domesticated water buffalo's. 

Shock! Horror! 

The irresponsible 'natives' are destroying wildlife all over the world. And we, concerned about our childrens' future, don't care a lot about theirs. 

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation

 Society (WDCS)

Much is made of  local dolphin hunting in Japan:

“The dolphin hunt is a lawful activity in Japan, approved as a fishing activity by the Japanese Government. But it is both unsustainable and horrifically cruel,” said WDCS Australia’s Michelle Grady, who visited Japan this month to investigate the hunts.

For the past four years, Futo has not hunted dolphins. The drive hunts were only occurring in one location in Japan - Taiji, following years of international condemnation and the depletion of dolphin populations as a result of hunting. The drive hunts at Taiji are the subject of a BBC documentary broadcast this week. 

The excuse of pest control is used to partially justify the hunts, arising from the misconception that dolphins compete with fishermen for their daily catch. Their meat and organs are sold for human consumption in Japan, despite the risk posed by their high levels of contaminants

Help us end the horror of these cruel and unsustainable drive hunts by sending an email letter to Mr Kenzo Oshima, Ambassador of Japan to Australia via the link below..."

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS)

shizuoka net dolphin

Meanwhile, the Japanese happily carry on eating dolphin, and perhaps when you see the tender dolphin steaks above, and the sizzling braised dolphin to the right, you'll understand why.

See that inch of  fat just above the dolphin steak? - that's just about the same as the inch on a piece of belly or back bacon. Unlike the bacon (which, when you get it, has been stuffed with hormones, steroids, antibiotics, saltpetre, and plain old water, to make it look fatter) dolphin subcutaneous fat has some useful nutrients.

In 'real life' I used to sell commercial kitchen equipment projects, worldwide. One of the most expensive items was a meat tumbling machine, specifically designed to pad out hams, bacon, etc with salts and water.

Shock! Horror! But see below how we 'civilised Westerners' are treating dolphins in our hunger for cheap tuna fish (much of which ends up being fed by little old ladies to their cats).  

El Fornio Historical Society

And it's only 50 years since these dolphins were canned in cool California. 

This town now promotes 'dolphin swim camps'.

How sweet.

"One of the most common dolphins is the bottlenose dolphin. The bottlenose dolphin is mainly found in coastal waters between 45 degrees north and 45 degrees south, also in Northern Europe waters. It is believed that there are two types of bottlenose dolphin regional wise: oceanic form and coastal form. The coastal population lives in fairly open groups with twenty or less in a pod, some groups are found to contain more in open ocean. It is not uncommon for these species to interact and breed with other species, as would a human interact with other diverse humans. The dolphins feeding behavior is adapted to the availability of resources. They sometimes are known to work together to catch fish from large schools, they also trail behind large fishing boats to catch what falls behind.

In the past twenty years a large amount of bottlenose dolphin have been killed due to the tuna fishery. In the Eastern Pacific swim large schools of tuna; these shoals tend to be under herds of dolphins, for some unexplained reason. Because of this, fishermen can easily find schools of tuna. The tuna are being caught under purse seine nets, which encircles the shoals of tuna and then is pulled back on board the fishing vessel, catching both tuna and dolphin. Initially the mortality rate was 500,000 each year for dolphins alone".

Why Kill Dolphins?

"Almost 1,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die every day in nets and fishing gear. That's one every two minutes," said Dr Susan Lieberman, director of WWF's Global Species Programme.

Fishing nets kill 1,000 marine mammals daily - Yahoo! News

If we look at the characteristics that we share with dolphins and do not share with chimpanzees, we find conscious breath control, greatly reduced body hair, subcutaneous body fat, and greater brain size and complexity.

Sea Shepherd - Ocean Realm Spring 2001

So we massacre them, thoughtlessly - at much the same rate that Adolf Hitler massacred Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and Slavs. And a lot quicker than we British slaughtered Tasmanians.

"Dolphins, as we know them today, are well adapted to the sea. Their exceptionally strong bodies are streamlined for deep diving and speedy locomotion. They have extraordinary hearing beyond the range of humans, as well as an uncanny sonar system resembling a kind of underwater vision. This advanced system of echo location, now being studied by human naval officials for military purposes, may employ a kind of acoustical radar to map the position and movement of objects in their watery environment.

In addition to their unparalleled ability to navigate underwater, dolphins communicate with one another by means of a series of whistles, quacks, squeaks, clicks, and other noises often resembling Bronx cheers. Although we can hope to communicate with them someday, the human range of generating and hearing noise is relatively limited (50 - 500 Hz) when compared to the dolphins’ much wider auditory range (2000 - 80,000 Hz). They are known to be able to produce and hear sounds within our audible range, but to do so requires them to grunt and groan at frequencies lower (bass) than normal. Most of the sounds normally made by dolphins are inaudible to humans, making it improbable that their way of expressing meaning overlaps ours at all. Not inconceivably, dolphins in captivity may have been trying to communicate with us for years. If so, they must be quite discouraged by our lack of response."

Cosmic Evolution - Epoch 7 - Cultural Evolution

The dolphin is deservedly popular, but couldn't all the shmaltz be over-doing it a bit?

Baboy i Hayas - Bearded Pig - Sus barbatus barbatus

www.ultimateungulate.com

Adult female Sus barbatus

Wild pigs are not so plentiful on Siargao Island any more. The ex-Mayor of General Luna, Jaime Russillon, tells me he often used to go pig-shooting as a boy, but nowadays there are none left. 

It is only very recently that there has been such carnage, leading almost to local extinction. It's only very recently that the islanders have had guns (and motor bikes to take them to the hunting grounds).

The very few left are now in the forests and other remote parts of the island, but, on 'mainland' Mindanao, and in the Sulu Islands, to the south, there are still plenty, and herds of them can sometimes be seen swimming to and from Borneo. They are not at all restricted to inland areas.

I've noted elsewhere on this website the extraordinary likeness of the local domestic pigs to the native wild pigs

(see: Pigs) 

- with the obvious inference that pigs were domesticated locally.

Pigs still have a very important part in the local diet, but mainly for feasts of various kinds. As in so many other parts of South East Asia, it's not an everyday meat.  

Pig-Sticking For Pleasure and Profit

Wilfrid Walker described:

"A very clever invention was an arrow made for shooting deer and pig. The steel point was comparatively small, and it was fitted very lightly to a small piece of wood, which was also lightly placed in the end of the arrow. Attached at one end to the arrow-head was a long piece of stout native cord, which was wound round the shaft, the other end being fastened to the main shaft. When the arrow was shot into a pig,  for instance, the steel head soon fell apart from the small bit of wood, which in its turn would also drop off from the main shaft. The thick cord would then gradually become unwound, and together with the shaft would trail on the ground till at length it would be caught fast in the bamboos or other thick growth, and the pig would then be at the mercy of its pursuers. The steel head, being barbed, could not be pulled out in the pig's struggles to break loose. I had one of these arrows presented to me by the chief of these Negritos, but, as a rule, they are very hard to get as the Negritos value them very highly."

Aetas using long bow - Zambales, Luzon, Philippines
Adapted from:

Krieger's ...Weapons and Armor of the Philippine Islands

Of course, Wilfrid saw steel points, but before his time, most hunters used bamboo. 

Invention Of The Toggled Harpoon

The 'Negrito' (Aeta, Agta, Mamanwa) people are possibly the earliest surviving settlers of the Philippines.They are related to similar 'negrito' peoples in Sri Lanka (Veddas), Malaya (Orang Asli) and the Andamanese, and were probably the 'advance guard' of the first TMHs (Truly Modern Humans) to come 'Out of Africa' along the Indian Ocean coast.

They usually use long bows, and the 'primary release' method of holding the arrow - between thumb and forefinger. This method is almost the rule in the Pacific and SE Asia, and in the Pacific NorthWest of America. 

The toggled harpoon is still in use by many peoples of the Pacific, from the Inuit of the far North, to the Maori of New Zealand. 

The Philippine Negritos were originally coastal people, and primarily fishermen - perhaps it was they who invented a very effective tool for catching large fish - with a traceable head, a retrieving string, and a floating shaft - the same as used by the Inuit and Captain Ahab the Whaler.  

Arrow release is the way of holding the nock and letting loose the arrow in shooting. Morse describes four methods among the tribes N. of Mexico, the first three being Indian: 

- (1) Primary release, in which the nock is held between the thumb and the first joint of the forefinger; 

- (2) secondary release, in which the middle and the ring fingers are laid inside of the string;

- (3) tertiary release, in which the nock is held between the ends of the forefinger and the middle finger, while the first three fingers are hooked on the string; 

- (4) the Mediterranean method, confined to the [Inuit], whose arrows have a flat nock, in which the string is drawn with the tips of the first, second, and third fingers, the nock being lightly held between the first and the second fingers. 

Morse finds that among the North American tribes, the Navaho, Chippewa, Micmac, and Penobscot used the primary release; the Ottawa , Chippewa, and Zuni the secondary; the Omaha , Arapaho, Cheyenne , Assiniboin, Comanche, Crows, Siksika, and some Navaho, the tertiary.

Bows, Arrows and Quivers of Indians

Such a little bit of bog-standard, old-fashioned observation of different practical habits might tell us more about the origins and spread of different groups of North American Indians (and others, elsewhere) than any amount of genetic studies, which, despite their seemingly 'true' mathematical basis, are prone to huge amounts of assumption and error.

Onggoy - Philippine Long-Tailed Macaque - Macaca fascicularis

Kabog - Common Island Flying Fox - Pteropus hypomelanus

Perhaps they're more appealing the other way up? I don't think so.

This one had very different colouring, but it was almost certainly a variant on the same species.

It has a large tick on its nose.

Flying foxes are common in agricultural areas from sea level to ~900m but absent in primary forest, all over South East Asia, with their relatives (Megabats) throughout the Western Pacific and countries adjacent to the Indian Ocean. 

They are much sought after as food, and widely hunted. Their flesh is said to be very good as an aphrodisiac; "good for the stickle".

They are small (about 150gm) and very bony, and they also have an unpleasant smell. I have never eaten one, and have to confess I have no great urge to do so even if my stickle is not quite what it was. They are also covered with parasites.

They commonly roost on small islands, and feed almost exclusively on fruit.  

In the early evening, at dusk, they fly out en masse from their roosts. There is a local bar, the Flying Fox, of course, whose early evening entertainment is watching the fly-past of hundreds of these bats, as they come around the small mountain in front.

We have acquired half a dozen; mainly from the mananggutay, the man who climbs coconut trees to tap the flower sap for tuba, the coconut wine. They drink it avidly, and get quite drunk.

They quite lack the ultrasound echolocation system of microbats, and chatter and quarrel endlessly. 

Rhon, my general factotum and Zoo Manager, seems able to hold quite long conversations with them and feed them by hand.  

He feeds 'our' bats on papaya, bananas and breadfruit. 

Occasionally, if they have been good and not bitten anyone, especially me, they get a bowl of sugar water, which they lap up with very long tongues. 

There is controversial but well-supported evidence that Megachiroptera (fruit bats) evolved flight separately from Microchiroptera (insectivorous bats). When adaptations to flight are discounted in a cladistic analysis, the Megachiroptera are allied to the primates by anatomical features that are not shared with Microchiroptera. Some genetic evidence, however, has pointed to the common ancestry of Megachiroptera and at least some Microchiroptera. Wikipedia

I have always been interested in animals in general; but bats in particular, not in the least. 

Siargao Island has at least 7 species of fruit bat.

So it was not easy for me to identify these particular bats, though I should have suspected they were the commonest fruit bat around.

But one died and we kept its skull, and I was able to compare this with an internet museum collection 

At one time, we also had one of these, the Common Rousette, Rousettus amplexicaudatus, but it was caught with such cack-handed lack of skill that it died, from injury and shock, fairly quickly.

Kago - Colugo - Cynocephalus volans

This is a very unique mammal - it shouldn't be here, because it doesn't occur all around the Indian Ocean, or the Pacific - at least, not nowadays. It only inhabits the edges of the ancient Sundaland - from Burma to Southern Thailand and Indo China to Malaysia, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the Philippines - the Philippines species is different. 

It's not a bat, nor a rodent like a squirrel. It's no close relation of any of the 'flying squirrels' found around the world, in Australia or the Americas. Instead, it turns out, it is most closely related to the sub-order of Anthropoidea - humans, apes and monkeys. 

That's us.

It is often called a 'flying lemur', and most 'scientific' descriptions sniffily dismiss this idea. But, it seems, it's very closely related to them - about as much as we are.

So perhaps you'll understand why I was particularly upset when our first colugo turned up suddenly one day, and expired the next. We were quite unprepared for its arrival. I had to take the heron out of the parrot cage (prepared for future parrots, not colugos), and stick the heron in the old lizard cage, from which it promptly escaped. We supplied the new arrival with bananas, mangoes and papaya, but it didn't touch any of them. 

Our colugo spent the first day and night suspended in a ball at the very top of the cage, but, otherwise, seemed alright. As it's mainly nocturnal, sleeping all day seemed quite normal.

When I arrived home late the evening of the second day, after the

 ex-Mayor's birthday party, it was very, very dead, but still warm, and

 still hanging by its hands.

The bright yellow patch of fur on its nose was a mystery; it was fur, and not a parasite. The other white patches scattered around its surprisingly woolly fur are explainable - as camouflage. It would look, hanging in the most common tree of the South East Asian coastal forest (original or secondary) like any other old coconut.

This colugo weighed just 750gm, but they are said to grow to 2-3kg - a fine meal. 

Philippine Eagles think so too - colugos and monkeys are its main prey.

Mine is in the freezer compartment - I intend to dissect it, one day, for its skin and skeleton, and may well taste a piece - once I've got over the sentimental bit. 

Sorry if this 'full-flight' photo is not very convincing; the animal is, after all, dead.

The colugo's hand is almost human, but, past the first joint, the thumb is fur-covered, so not very useful for climbing. Its well-developed claws are used for climbing.

The foot has a very small 'big toe' and 4 other toes; the 'little toe' is the biggest. The 'angle' in the skin (RH side) is just a bit of rigor mortis.

Other parts of the colugo are also quite human-looking.

The colugo's teeth are strange...

The colugo's teeth are indeed very strange. The upper row side incisors are sharp and 'carnassial' - ready for slicing things. (Rhon said: - 'Just like a tiger sharks teeth' , and indeed, they were). So are the molars. The first incisors on the lower row (middle) are flat, but grooved. The second are quite a different colour, and very fragile (one broke while I was trying to engineer it to 'smile'). All the front incisors fell out as I was preparing the skull, and to be honest, now I don't know which were upper and which lower. The pohoto on the right shows their very strange combed side incisors.

Then, the very next day, after our first colugo died, a charming lady brought his mate, much larger, from the same location. She had quite a different colouring.

She seemed to adapt very well, climbing about, exploring. The third day she ate a large bunch of camote leaves, and drank some of the coconut water from an opened, hanging young coconut. She refused bong'on, the local orange, bananas, and a juicy banana stem.

Then she began to languish, but not too noticeably; she hung most of each day in a ball, and started to wander at dusk.  

By the sixth day, she was noticeably unwell, and I realised she was almost emaciated. I brought her in, and tried to force feed her with sugar and milk, and tempt her with coconut flowers and buds, but she wouldn't take them, and died.

I knew next to nothing about the colugo's feeding habits. Nor, it seems, does anyone else.

The following is from Wikipedia:

Colugos are shy, nocturnal, and restricted to the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia. In consequence, remarkably little is known about their habits. They are certainly herbivores, and are thought to eat mostly leaves, shoots, flowers and sap, and probably fruit as well. They have well-developed stomachs capable of extracting nutriment from leaves.

The Philippine Colugo is classified as vulnerable.

In addition to the ongoing clearing of its rainforest habitat, it is hunted for its meat and fur.

It is also hunted by the gravely endangered Philippine Eagle:

some studies suggest that colugos account for 90% of the eagle's diet. It is not known how the diurnal eagles catch so many of the nocturnal colugos, which are thought to spend the greater part of the day curled up in tree hollows or hanging inconspicuously underneath a branch.

They are certainly strange creatures. I have been brought seven of them, including a mother and baby. The first two died, I think mainly from stress, and the third arrived in a heavy rainstorm, soaked, so I decided to keep it warm and dry overnight, and let it go the next day. By morning, it was dead. Now any new arrivals are released immediately.

The mother and baby went first; then they came back to my garden; you can see them hanging together in the right-hand photos.

Colugos must be one of evolution's many mistakes. They are supposed to be adapted to climbing, but go about it like a rabbit doing pull-ups; reach up with the forelimbs, grab the tree trunk, then a quick jump with the back legs, looking for all the world like an inchworm caterpillar. 

They frequently fall from trees, and curl up in a ball, bouncing like a coconut. 

Colugos make a screeching, bleating growl when frightened, but seem to communicate with 'Tchhh-tchhh' sounds when being sociable from tops of trees.

They nurse their infants in a makeshift pouch in the curled tail, but, as a consequence, have possibly the showiest method of excretion that I have seen, arching their tails high and elegantly behind and then shooting out the shit.

But they can certainly glide; as much as 70-80 metres, almost without losing height, and, as they do so, they flex their bodies to change their angle to the air, gaining even more distance.

Colugo mothers carry their babies, and 'fly' around with them. This mother, I would guess was carrying the equivalent of a ten-year old human child.

The baby is just peeking out.

Bo'ot - Philippine Pygmy Squirrel - Exilisciurus concinnus

This little fellow, about 4" long, is fairly common on Siargao Island, and endemic to the Mindanao Faunal region. It wouldn't make much of a meal for anyone, being so tiny, but it has two relatives, the Philippine Tree Squirrel (Sundasciurus philippinensis) and the Mindanao Flying Squirrel (Petinomys crinitus) which are a bit larger, and also endemic to the same region.

Amag - Tarsier - Tarsius syrichta

Another local mammal without an African/Indian equivalent, except perhaps the galago, or bush-baby.

It's also much too small for eating, although many otherwise civilised Europeans who eat song birds might disagree.

It doesn't smell too good, has teeth like small sharp chisels, bites, and has disgusting table manners. They lke live geckoes and cockroaches, and chomp them, while they are still struggling, with great glee.

In my humble opinion, the tarsier lacks all but the most superficial charm.

Fedor Jagor, the German naturalist, came across tarsiers in the late 19th century, and was as confused as everyone else about what they really are.

He was also given the same advice on tarsier diet as I was. Could the local folk wisdom actually be true?

"I had an opportunity of purchasing two live macaques (sic). These extremely delicate and rare little animals, which belong to the class of semi-apes, are to be found only in Samar, and live exclusively on charcoal. My first “mago” was, in the beginning, somewhat voracious, but he disdained vegetable food, and was particular in his choice of insects, devouring live grasshoppers with delight. It was extremely ludicrous, when he was fed in the day time, to see the animal standing, perched up perpendicularly on his two thin legs with his bare tail, and turning his large head–round as a ball, and with very large, yellow, owl-like eyes–in every direction, looking like a dark lantern on a pedestal with a circular swivel. Only gradually did he succeed in fixing his eyes on the object presented to him; but, as soon as he did perceive it, he immediately extended his little arms sideways, as though somewhat bashful, and then, like a delighted child, suddenly seizing it with hand and mouth at once, he deliberately tore the prey to pieces. During the day the mago was sleepy, short-sighted, and, when disturbed, morose; but with the decreasing daylight he expanded his pupils, and moved about in a lively and agile manner, with rapid noiseless leaps, generally sideways. He soon became tame, but to my regret died after a few weeks; and I succeeded only for a short time in keeping the second little animal alive".
The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes

Watch this space.

He is supposed to be omnivorous, but ate nothing at all while I kept him, so after a week, we let him go.

Apologia

I'm going to give up zoo-keeping. The animals don't behave in any normal way, and apart from the privilege of seeing them at close quarters, are, to tell the truth, not very interesting. Few of them actually do anything, except at night. My only real purpose was to observe them at close quarters for a relatively short time, photograph them and let them go. But the mortality rate was heartrending. I don't think adult wild animals react at all well to captivity, however 'generous'.

Only the tabili (green lizards) constantly copulate, and have produced a few eggs.

The kabog (fruit bats) have settled in, and chatter to me in recognition every morning.

The python sits all day in a tight coil, even though I've chased myself stupid trying to catch him a fresh, delicious, live mouse in my kitchen. He escaped the other day, got into my kitchen and ate one of my resident rats. Then he got caught trying to get out again. He's back in his cage nursing a large lump in his belly - not very active now.

The bibang (water monitor lizard) has totally destroyed one of my specimen banana trees. I forgot which variety it was supposed to be, anyway, so I've forgiven him. I rewarded him with a nice fresh eel, but he choked to death on it.

I will still buy whatever the villagers bring me, but at lower and lower prices, to discourage them bit by bit, and try to ensure the animals don't end up in the pot.  

New Pages as at May 2006