1st afternoon Kinabatangan Riverine ecosystem discovery

1st afternoon Kinabatangan Riverine ecosystem discovery 

We dumped our bags and left straight away for a 3 hour sunset, animal spotting boat ride. There were only five other people in the boat which was low to the water, but I didn’t DARE submerge my hand in case there was a croc lurking! 

The Kinabatangan River is the longest river in Sabah, it’s 560km long. 23,103 hectares is a preserved as a Wildlife Sanctuary and has the highest density and diversity of wildlife in all of Malaysia. Being out on the river, where there is NO evidence of human habitation (except for a few fishing nets put there by the local villages), I felt like an intruder into the world of wild animals. Professor Ross Dowling of Edith Cowan University in Australia said: “This is one of the last pristine wilderness areas on the face of the planet and the sensible, visionary eco-tourism lodges are now custodians and they are doing this in a magnificent way working wit the local people to secure the future of the areas  through sustainable eco-tourism”

The boat skimmed down the  coffee coloured water.

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 We immediately we saw a group of Proboscis monkeys. Did you know that only the males have a large protruding nose and that sometimes they must move it out of the way before putting food in it’s mouth, it also turns red when it is angry or excited? Females have a pointy nose which makes it especially easy to tell the different genders apart. Proboscis is the nose for any a mammal when it is long and mobile, such as an elephant’s trunk or a tapir’s snout. I know know why these primates are called Proboscis monkeys!

You know, maybe these monkeys and I aren’t all that different, I mean they do love to swim. Proboscis monkeys paddle across small streams and rivers, in fact one time a Proboscis monkey was found by a fisherman 2km from shore in the open water!

We saw them high up in the trees which might have been a good thing. The Proboscis monkey has a large belly and its digestive system has several parts with special bacteria to help digest their leaf diet. This process releases a lot of gas so they have bloated bellies and they fart a lot!

This baby Proboscis monkey was my favorite on this boat ride. 

We also saw a couple of groups of pig-tailed macaques. I learnt that when the females are ready to mate they have red bums and sure enough, there was a female, with, a red bum. The Alpha male came along. All the telephotos zoomed in! I had the video camera rolling. I didn’t need to read the information about them, I by now had discovered that they are very social animals!