In the vanishing lowland rainforests of Borneo, new research is underway to uncover and understand the unique cultural behaviors in wild orangutans. Photographer Tim Laman, researcher Cheryll Knott, and National Geographic Young Explorer Robert Suro have documented rarely-seen unique orangutan behaviors such as making pillows, fashioning umbrellas, and displaying regional greetings. With orangutan habitats disappearing […]
Tag: borneo
Facebook video shows orangutan defending forest against bulldozer
Dramatic footage released last week by an animal welfare group shows a wild orangutan trying in vain to fight off destruction of its rainforest habitat in Borneo. The video, filmed in 2013 but posted on Facebook on June 5th for World Environment Day by International Animal Rescue (IAR), was shot in Sungai Putri, a tract […]
War dancing Pygmy elephants of Borneo’s Deramakot Forest Reserve
While looking for the Clouded leopard in Borneo, we came across the herd of Borneo Pygmy elephants in Deramakot Forest Reserve a few days in a row. Unlike most pygmy elephants that would retreat at the first sight of a vehicle, this herd was very relaxed. They were happy to stay on the road and […]
Borneo Lost Half of its Orangutans in Just 16 Years
Conservationists have worked to secure the survival of critically endangered Bornean orangutans, but researchers have found they’re still declining at an alarming rate and have lost about half their population in less than two decades. According to a study published in the journal “Cell Biology“, which drew on field survey data collected from 38 research […]
New Species of Orangutan Is Rarest Great Ape on Earth
On November 20, 2013, the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme got a call about an injured orangutan found in the mountainous region of Tapanuli. “He had cuts on his face, on his head, back, hands, and legs,” recalls researcher Matt Nowak. “They even found some air rifle pellets inside his body”—indicating torment and harassment by people. […]
Scientists Discover Rare and Endangered Cat in Borneo
Researchers working in Borneo have captured footage of one of the most elusive and least studied wild cats on earth. Bay cats, or Bornean cats, are about the size of a large house cat and can only be found on the island of Borneo. Very little is known about them, and they’ve continued to elude […]
Bornean orangutan declared ‘critically endangered’ as forests shrink
The Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) is now critically endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This change means that both species of orangutan now face an “extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.” “This is full acknowledgement of what has been clear for a long time: orangutan conservation is failing,” […]
42 pangolins rescued, then sold to restaurants
On February 1st, local police seized 42 live Sunda pangolins (Manis javanica) from poachers and handed them over to forest rangers in Vietnam’s northern province of Bac Ninh. While the poachers were slapped with a fine, the rangers turned around and sold the live pangolins to local restaurants for a reported $56 a kilo, netting […]
Unraveling the secrets of one of the world’s most mysterious big cats
The Sunda clouded leopard has always been shrouded in mystery. Only declared a separate species from its mainland cousin, the Borneo clouded leopard, in 2006, the IUCN lists the cat as Endangered. The distinction between the Borneo clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulas) and the Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi) was made by ground-breaking molecular coding technologies […]
World’s most cryptic feline photographed in logging concession
The bay cat is arguably the world’s least-known member of the cat family (Felidae). Although first described by scientists in 1874, no photo existed of a living specimen until 1998 and a wild cat in its rainforest habitat wasn’t photographed until five years later. Given this, scientists with Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Imperial […]
