I have been at the Sukau Rainforest Lodge (browse sukau.com or facebook.com/Sukaurainforestlodge, it's beautiful) for almost three weeks and I love it! The river cruises feature amazing wildlife. But the wildlife is a pleasant dilemma, what is my favourite jungle animal?
This has been a hard decision, but after much time and consideration, the Proboscis monkey is my favourite animal in Sukau. Not only does this simian look good, it's an amazing creature to watch. And an ongoing joke amongst the guides is that I will marry one of the males, keeping me in the Bornean jungles forever! Don't get me wrong, I love all the animals, but they don’t compare to the Proboscis. The elephants tend to just eat grass, nice but boring after awhile. The orangutans are shy, while the snakes and crocodiles are best at a distance.
Here are some reasons why I love this unique animal. The first thing about this handsome monkey that catches the eye is the nose! How did the nose get so big? Better sense of smell? Well only the males have the big nose and it's purely for show to attract the ladies. The females seek males with large noses, yeah, size matters. Some noses reach 10 cm or about four inches. The female’s noses are short, pointy and witch like. Evolution is strange!
Proboscis is a fancy word for a big nose. The locals nicknamed the monkey the "Dutch Monkey"; it resembled the early Dutch explorers with big bellies and long red noses. Also, the males have a reddish-brown torso, grey limbs and a long white tail, or if you look closely a leather jacket and underwear.
This brings me to the second thing you probably ask, why such big bellies? Believe it or not these monkeys, unlike me, have an excuse for having that belly. Proboscis monkeys have a colobine, or two chamber stomach, which makes them always look pregnant! Similar to cows with a four chambered stomach, the digestive system allows the monkeys to feed on unripe fruits, nuts and leaves. Food retention lasts from 14 to 52 hours, but eating the smallest bit of glucose upsets their tummies. The monkeys spend 77% of their day resting, 20 % feeding and the last 3% is spent being awesome; I could adopt and adapt to this lifestyle.
This rare primate, only on the island of Borneo, has adapted to three habitats: mangrove, swamp and riverine forest. It's a good swimmer and often swims across rivers and or jumps down from trees.
The only monkey with semi webbed back feet, it is fast and agile in the water. It can swim 20 meters submerged (the males sometimes use that big schnoz as a snorkel) and walking on mangrove floors without sinking.
A vocal monkey with two types of honks, seven types of shrieks and two types of growls.
From time to time the proboscis monkey will continue to walk upright when it leaves the water. Other than man, gibbons and giant pangolins, this is the only mammal to walk upright. Can you say evolution?
Watch this video to see one more reason why I love watching the beautiful monkeys!
http://video.nationalgeographic.com.au/video/animals/mammals-animals/monkeys-and-lemurs/weirdest-proboscis-monkey/
After reading all this you still probably think this monkey is still strange, ugly and wondering how I could like it so much? Don’t judge until you see these fascinating monkeys up close, I think they are pretty special.
Part of my intern-ship is to tag along and evaluate BET (Borneo Eco Tours) tours. My first tour was Kinabalu National Park and Pouring Hot Springs. The guests, two couples from Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA were in Borneo for about a week. In their early 70's, they were on a month tour of Borneo, Singapore and Nepal (I can only hope I'm that cool when I'm in my 70's). They were an eager group, keen to see and try everything.
The park is about an hour outside of the city, a nice drive with occasional views of Mt.Kinabalu before clouds completely cover it. Malaysia’s first world heritage site, Mt. Kinabalu National Park (about the size of Singapore ) is home to the world’s oldest rainforests. The park fauna is rich in species with 326 bird, 112 mammals and two thirds of the islands reptile species.While the park contains the world’s highest youngest non- volcanic mountain and has diverse fauna, its unique flora made the World Heritage list in 2000.
The park’s flora contains elements of Himalayas, China, Australia, Malaysia, as well as pan-tropical flora that climb five vegetation groups, from a low rain forest to alpine scrubs. The park contains 5,000 to 6,000 vascular plants, including 1,000 orchids, nine types of pitcher plants (some can digest rats) and the largest flower in the
world the rafflesia. The rafflesia has an amazing life cycle see the picture below. I felt very lucky to see it!
All the different flora flora were so cool, from the various orchids to learning how the natives have lived off these forests for millennia. The jungle provides nearly everything-kerosene berries to start fires, plants that have hooks that catch fish and wild ginger (see picture below).
After the jungle walk and lunch of Nasi goreng ( fried rice) and fish (I even ate some of the head!) we headed about 40 minutes to Poring Springs. The canopy walk was amazing, but scary! For those of you familiar with the tree top walk in Walpole, it's similar to that. For some reason this petrified me, maybe because the walk was all ropes (it takes a year to change the ropes!) as opposed to steel in Walpole. And it very narrow so you really swung when you walked.
Poring Hot Springs was a bit of a disappointment; Yellowstone’s beautiful natural hot springs have spoiled me. Our tour, on a Sunday, was packed with local kids running around all over the place. And unlike Yellowstone, there were was all sorts of man made pools. But I'm sure soaking in the tubs would be amazing after a mountain hike.
The farmers markets on the way back were amazing and a good chance to stock up tropical fruit. The different varieties of tropical fruit are unavailable in some Western Countries (Mangosteen and rambutan sound weird but are both so good see the picture below) or the yummy bananas, mangoes or pineapples. Oh yeah, the fruit costs about a quarter of what it costs in Perth. I can't get enough of the fruit and have withdrawals if I don't eat a mango a day. Off to the shops to buy some mangos!
