Cool Critters of Danum

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This week was quite exciting in many ways. I should have known we were in for some good stuff when on Sunday night, my colleague came home with a reticulated python strangling his left biceps. Let’s just say that it took quite a bit of effort for him to forcibly peel it off without getting bitten. On Monday when our Land Rover was smashed up by an angry elephant, I thought everything else this week would pale in comparison. Then on Tuesday, we had a barrage of wildlife encounters that managed to top the ellies. Wednesday was pretty low key but we discovered that one of the treefrog species here will try to "jam" the call of a nearby neighbor by calling at the exact same time, which is apparently rare. I wish I could have put the week on pause just to process everything! (apologies for the photo placement--I can't move them to correspond to the text)

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Ellies
Ever since arriving at Danum, we have been seeing elephant footprints and dung all over the place. Several people we spoke with had seen them, but we never managed to get a glimpse of one—until Monday. When we began our night survey, we heard a strange sound that our research assistant Tambi told us was an elephant. I have not had much experience with wild elephants, but here at Danum, the word is that the elephants can be pretty destructive, and that if you see one, you had better try to get out of its way, and fast. So I was a little bit nervous that the elephants might come up our stream while we were working, and that we might have some trouble, but I quickly forgot all about it once we started looking for frogs. On our way back out to the car after the survey, we started hearing car horns honking and people yelling. Normally in cities, I don’t pay any attention to people shouting. But when I’m in the forest, when I’m not expecting there to be any other people around and I hear yelling, I get a little nervous. Especially since this particular stream is 16 km from the field station on a logging road that has no houses or settlements anywhere for at least 50 km. However, Tambi didn’t seem too nervous, so I figured he could sort out whatever was going on. As we approached the road, I could see headlights and a few people, and a large, strange object in the ditch between the forest and the road. That turned out to be our Land Rover. The people were station staff who had been alerted to the elephant by someone heading towards the station about an hour or so earlier. Needless to say we were all a little bit shocked! Apparently, a male elephant had come down the road, seen the car, decided he didn’t like the look of it, and rammed the driver’s side, smashing up the doors, windows, and front panel, and shoving it onto its side in the nearby ditch. Now, I should reiterate two things. One is that these elephants are “pygmy” elephants. Not only that, they’re Asian pygmy elephants. So they’re sort of the smallest of the small elephants. Second, this is a double-cab Land Rover, which is probably one of the heaviest vehicles on the road that isn’t an 18-wheeler. I think this is a great illustration of the power of wild animals—these elephants may be “pygmy” but their power is definitely “bygmy.” The other aspect of this story that I secretly like is that these elephants don’t like anything unnatural in their forest, and they’re not afraid to take matters into their own feet. Numerous researchers have had equipment repeatedly destroyed—the elephants just don’t want anything in the forest that doesn’t belong there. Several times this week I have smiled at the thought of these keepers of the jungle, patrolling and looking for things that don’t belong and smashing up things that shouldn’t be there. Given the rate of deforestation today, I like the idea of nature taking back control and showing humans who is REALLY the boss. Obviously, I’m glad that we weren’t in the car when the elephant came along, and I’m glad the station has insurance to repair the car. But I think that maybe the forests of the world need more marauding elephants who will keep out anything that shouldn’t be there, preserving the forest for wildlife and humans for generations to come.




Tarsiers, civets, and treefrogs
On Tuesday we had some pretty torrential rains which caused our survey stream to flood, preventing us from working on it. So we opted for a forest transect instead—we walked through the forest for a couple of hours, recording every frog we saw just as we would on our stream. About 15 minutes into our survey, I heard some rattling in the bushes ahead of me, and when I walked up to it, I saw a strange fluffy tan creature hopping sideways from stem to stem—the tarsier. If you have never heard of tarsier, don’t worry—I hadn’t heard of them until I came to Asia. They are small nocturnal primates that live in very few places (the Philippines, Borneo, and Indonesia). Does anyone still remember Gremlins? Think of a Mogwai with slightly smaller ears and long, skinny fingers and you have a good idea of what a tarsier is. I don’t know why but they make me think of little aliens--they hop laterally from stem to stem through the forest, and they can turn their heads almost 180 degrees, like an owl. They have huge eyes to allow them to see at night, and they eat insects, which they grab with both hands and shove into their mouths as if the world depended on it. They’re cool and crazy, and I finally saw my first one! So I was pretty convinced that our Tuesday had just hit its peak.

Further down the trail, our RA Tambi pointed out a civet (a small mammal that loosely resembles a cross between a cat and a mongoose) which was in the forest about 10 feet from us. We all watched him as he hunted around for insects and whatever else he could find, not at all bothered by our presence. He went up the trail ahead of us, circled back to check out the buttresses of a nearby tree, and kept on his way while we followed him for a bit. We tried taking some pictures, but my camera wasn’t getting anything good, and I finally tried the video which worked like a dream! I know that as a professional biologist I should be immune to animal cuteness, but this little guy gets me every time. If they made civet stuffed animals, I would totally buy one.

On Wednesday we had some more rain, so we decided to check out a pond near our house which is like a mecca for treefrog breeding. As luck would have it, we saw two amazing things. First, Rhacophorus dulitensis which is a small frog that has turquoise bones. You read that right—turquoise bones. And not “it looks turquoise through the skin” turquoise, but actually colored turquoise. Why? I have no idea, and I have yet to find anyone who can tell me—any future scientists out there want to solve this mystery for us? Second, we video recorded the call of Rhacophorus appendiculatus. I am always curious about how frogs will respond to audio or video playback of other males (or themselves), so just for fun, I played the video back near the male I recorded, and he sort of went a little crazy—in a froggy way. Every time the video male called, the actual frog called—instantly, so that he was effectively “masking” or “jamming” the call of the other male (which in this case was video of himself). Also, his jamming calls were very different from his normal calls—so he has a separate set of jamming calls and normal calls. I emailed a professor in the US who is an acoustics guru, and he said there is only one other species of frog that does this kind of "jamming"—so we're going to set up some experiments to see how often it happens, describe the reaction, and find out whether the response is different when he has both a visual and audio cue (in our playback, the frog couldn't see the screen). Who says that science isn't fun!?

I'm still reeling a little bit from everything that happened this week, but I'm looking forward to diving into more of it tomorrow. I simply cannot get over how amazing this place is! I hope you are each having a great start to your November, and I look forward to hearing from you!

xoxo

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Photos

Canopy at Danum
Looking up from the base of one of the huge dipterocarps here.

Rachel & Jen ready for night surveys
Heading out for the night--excited to find our frogs!

Rhacophorus dulitensis
This frog has turquoise bones!

Rhacophorus appendiculatus
This male will actively try to "jam" the call of a nearby male by calling over him--even if it's playback of his own call!