The Jungle Book - 18 Creatures - and Counting

One of the things we most wanted when we came to Langkawi, is to see jungle animals.

We get our wish.

So far, we have seen 18 jungle animals. Sadly, as I write this from Penang, after leaving Langkawi at the end of our two and a half weeks, II can confirm that we didn’t make it to a nice round 20, but hey, you can’t have everything.

Life is just too cruel.

Jungle Animals seen in Langkawi.

1. Dusky Leaf Monkeys: Black with white circles, like spectacles around their eyes, and a a round mouth giving them a permanent look of surprise. They are very shy so we never see them at close quarters except for that fleeing group we encounter in the little walked paths around the posh resort we walk to on our first day. But we see them, often, in the trees around our jungle home. If we are very quiet, they play a little nearer – but never on the ground. They stay safely in the trees.
2. Macaque Monkeys: Seen everywhere and not in the least bit shy. In fact they operate a little like gangsters, hounding humans for food and rifling through your bag if you are silly enough to go anywhere carrying edible substances. Naturally, they should eat mangrove shoots, nuts and leaves.  When we kayak through the Mangrove forests of Langkawi, which we do today, and which is thoroughly amazing, weaving our way through the mangroves which, almost a jungle animal themselves, have learned to survive on the water, developing thick bark which is termite resistant and water durable, and propagating by dropping their seeds in long pods straight into the soft mud when the tide is out, so that as it falls it can, almost immediately, produce another shoot. This goes a little wrong if the monkeys eat them of course, but nature, left alone, finds its own balance, and the Mangroves have only become so adapted to their environment because of exactly that natural balance. That the Macaque monkeys have become so prevalent and, in certain ways, such a menace, is due to mankind’s rather less natural intervention. We have been feeding them, and therefore endangering them and their jungle counterparts, for years, as the tourist trade has begun to take force. Tourism so often places life in jeopardy. It’s both crucial, and very different to manage the maze of conflicting dos and don’ts that govern any kind of ‘reflective’ or ‘eco’ tourism. And once you add a set of moral obligations, the maze, like the entangled roots of the Mangroves we navigate our way through, becomes ever more twisted and more possible to get stuck in.
3. Water Snake: Only one, but it was the first snake I had seen, and I was very excited. Again, this was on the mangrove tour and the snake was just below the surface of the water, at low tide, so the water was shallow. It was only small, black and white and it hides in a hole in the water bed, coming out to sneak up on unwary prey. It’s not poisonous to humans, though would give you a fright if you encountered one as you paddled.
4. Bats: Hiding in the ‘bat caves’ which we visited as part of the kayaking through the mangroves. Hundreds of them, huddled up against the roof of the cave. Feeding on up to 2,000 mosquitoes in one hour, the adult bat is a great friend to humans, and is curbing the continuing threat of disease spread by mosquitoes, especially, in South East Asia, Dengue fever, which is a killer if you are poor or a child, though otherwise resembles a severe flu, and can be recovered from as long as you act to control the rising fever. If that makes it sound OK, don’t get complacent. It kills thousands and thousands of people each year. Unfortunately humans don’t know what is good for them, and hunt bats or destroy their natural habitat, so that the diligent curbing of the mosquito population for us, becomes rather a thankless task for the bats. The bats we saw were insect bats, but the largest bat in the world, with a wing span of up to three metres, and a face similar in size and shape to a fox, is a fruit bat. It’s completely harmless, though it sounds quite terrifying. We see bats in the caves but also hidden under the huge wide leaves of jungle trees when we visit an eco reserve for a guided jungle walk. Just don’t open your mouth when you look up at them, says our guide, bats can poo in their sleep (though this is a rather intriguing warning given that the bats sleep upside down…)
5.   Giant Black Squirrels: We saw a few of these in Cambodia, but we see a great deal more of them in the jungle around Gemmy’s house. They are huge, about the size of badgers at the largest, and at the smallest, more like a racoon. They are just as agile as their smaller British counterparts, with a long black bushy tail and a white stripe down their bellies. They make a loud chattering noise, similar to what we associate with squirrels in the UK but much louder. Their lungs are a tad larger, after all. Despite this though, and their, presumably, greater weight, they can sit on the ends of very thin and fragile looking branches without a care in the world, doing their best Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon impressions.
6. Monitor Lizard!: Yes, we  do indeed get to see one – and it is huge. We see it waddling down the banks at the mangrove tour, and swimming out into the sea, for all the world like the crocodile it resembles. It can eat small rats, kittens and even cats if it really feels up to the fight, though often goes for smaller, rather less nimble and scratchy, animals. It’s impressive but despite their size they do avoid humans. We are, after all, the most dangerous animals on the planet. That we are aware of.
7. Keeled Rat Snake: This one was huge and a little frightening, despite my general and actually genuine, lack of fear of snakes, largely because it bears a very close resemblance, to the untrained eye, to a King Cobra. I was lying in the hammock at Gemmy’s house, listening the the sounds of the jungle and trying to spot creatures hiding in the trees, when I heard an angry hiss. I looked to the ground about a metre away to the right, and saw a very long, coiled snake, glistening in the light, and facing away from me, through the fence, eyeballing Halia, one of the cats that live with Gemmy, and Tupai, a grey and white striped cat who lives next door, and seems to be firm friends with Halia. The hiss came from one of the cats. The snake has risen up so it’s head is in the air, rather thin on the ground, and it’s neck seems alarmingly large, making me wonder, as I keep very still in my hammock, whether it is in fact a King Cobra.  I am a mixture of fascinated, delighted and aware that the bite of a King Cobra is very poisonous. I don’t want the cats to get bitten, or myself. Rationally though,, I can see straight away that the cats, a good distance away on the other side of the fence, and staring fixedly and very solemnly at the snake, are too clever to mess with this situation. And I know that the snake, generally one of the shyest creatures, is too clever to pursue a massive human as she clomps her way back down the hill over the rocks. After a while the snake seems to give up, and slithers away, coming to rest amid a cluster of bamboo.  I remain still, but even watching it, knowing where it is, I lose sight of it after a while, it is so well camouflaged. It’s a very big one though, it’s neck is slender, apart from the wider flares at the face, but it’s body must be a good four metres long and about the thickness of the ankle I am hoping it doesn’t decide to bite. The cats disappear, and, when it is clear I am not going to see it again, I make my way excitedly down to see M. When we look up the snake on a borrowed and rather dodgy internet connection later, I can see that the snake I saw was missing the distinctive ‘eye’ markings on the back of the face, and was probably a Keeled Rat Snake, and not a King Cobra. They eat rats, small mammals and possibly kittens. I  keep coming back to kittens. You’ll see why later. (This is the joy of catching up on blogs after the event – you have hindsight and can make sneaky little teaser references.) They don’t eat human beings though you might get a nasty bite. It won’t kill you though. But even so. I choose not to fight the snake. I have no problem with it. I’m pleased it’s there.
8.  Hornbills: These are beautiful and huge, with distinctive bills and black bodies. The yellow on their bills, however, is bright and beautiful. We only see them in flashes as they travel between trees.
9. Racket Tailed Drongo: An absolutely fantastic name for another quite large and exotic bird. It has two long thing tail feathers which look a little as though they have pom poms on the end. We see this a lot because we have a resident one who likes too perch on a particular jungle tree we can see from Gemmy’s kitchen as we help him with the washing up.
10.  Flying Lemur: We see this on the guided jungle walk, which I will talk about in more detail later on. The Lemur itself though, is a strange and fascinating creature, that seems as though it is either a mechanical beast, or from another planet. It sleeps with its eyes open on the side of a tree. When it wakes, the first thing it does is flick out a long tongue and lick it’s eyeballs because they are dry from being open while it slept. Once this is done and it is fully awake it poos in a big way, to reduce its body weight so it can fly. Standing underneath one of these, stepping back a little way so as not to be in the firing line, and watching it slowly raise its tail, to reveal a bulbous pink anus, and then strain and excrete enough weight to allow it to fly, is a surreal experience, to say the least. Once it’s done this it proceeds to turn its head all the way around, slowly, again almost mechanically, to consider where it might fly to. By the time it finally does so, it happens to fast, so gracefully and so silently, it feels like another creature  altogether, spreading it’s ‘wings’ – (flesh stretching from head down too toes to create a batman diamond shaped like cape) and flying above you close enough to feel the breeze of it, but so quiet as to be unnoticeable unless you knew it was there.
11.  Tree Snake: We stopped on a road when we were cycling out to a buffalo farm later in the trip. Two Malaysian men had stopped their vehicle and were staring at it. Long and green, with a red tip at the end of its tail, one of the Malaysian men told us that he had only seen them before the length of his finger. This, lying across the road, trying, bit by painful bit, to inch its way across  the hot tarmac, is about five metres long, though slender, about the thickness of my wrist. It was moving very slowly over the road because it was out in a heat not ideal for it and the surface of the road was probably literally burning it. As soon as it hit the grass on the other side though it put a real spurt on, causing M, who had been posed in front of it, taking a photo, to leap hastily out of its path. Entirely harmless though. Both M and the snake. Neither of them would be inclined to bite, or poisonous, even if provoked.
12. Asian Hornet: Talking of being provoked, we ‘see’ this because one swoops down and strings M in Gemmy’s kitchen. On his birthday of all days. Its venom includes an enzyme which enhances the pain reflex so that poor M experiences more pain than he should from its sting. Thankfully he knocks it off quickly, before it has a chance to do much damage. The sting also contains a chemical which ‘calls’ other hornets to the site of the sting, so that an entire hornett swarm could conceivably follow it. In general, though, it can’t kill you unless you happen to be allergic and M, though quite pained by the experience, is not.
13.  Tokay Lizard: This is what ‘Georgina’ is, and despite Gemmy saying that he doesn’t get to see her much, I do manage to get lucky one day, getting up in the night to get water.  She is sitting prettily on the wall of the kitchen, frozen in my presence and eating, hopefully, the hornets. She’s about the size of my arm and decorated in pink and green spots. Apparently the cats do their best to catch her, but she’s much too quick for them.
14. Oriole Bird: A small bird, but with a bright, almost fluorescent yellow streak all across its belly, its head and under its wings. It is so bright as to feel, if you catch it as it flies from one tree to another, like a flash of light. It’s very shy though. We only see it twice.
15. Terrapins: the male has a red head and the female a brown one. They look quite menacing but can’t really hurt you. They’re only small and will draw their slightly bad tempered looking head in as soon as you seem to be approaching.
16.  Fiddler Crab: This lives in the Mangrove jungle, rather than the land bound one. It has one small claw and one enormous claw, bigger than the rest of its body. When it eats it looks as though it is playing the fiddle hence its name. They look a little deformed. If I didn’t know better I would think some sort of human waste dumping or similar had led it to evolve a little wonky.
17. Wild Dogs: they make a howling noise in the night, though actually the monkey whooping tends to be more constant. They are not even slightly dangerous, being terrified of humans. Essentially, they are just stray dogs, but the word stray implies that they are somehow happy and the majority we saw, though they had more in the way of rough patches in their coats than other dogs, they looked happy and healthy and free.
18.  Gekkos: Perhaps a cheat but we saw so many of them in the jungle as well as in the houses all across South East Asia, I didn’t feel we could miss them out. You don’t see them at home, after all.

Of course really, you would have to add to this experience, Halia, the fully grown, yet slightly kittenish cat, capricious in his affections, sidling up for a stroke and a purr and then batting you away with his paw and pretending to bite you when he is bored. (He never either bites or shows his claws). Lada, big and proud and  ready to fight for his territory, but loves nothing better than to snuggle up close, or preferably on you at night, and go to sleep. And finally, Christopher, the naughtiest kitten in the word, who arrives, in actual fact, tomorrow, and who proceeds to melt everybody’s hearts, and then cause as  much havoc as is possible, given how small he is.

Oh, and the puppies, like wild dogs but on speed.

We have seen a lot of life in our time in Langkawi. And it has not failed to amaze us. My theory, as described yesterday, that life is in fact so unbelievable that we have constructed our own, duller version which we can believe in more freely, has  never been more closely proven than in the Langkawi jungles.