Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2009!

I am leaving for Christmas and New Year holiday started from tomorrow until 1st January 2009. Can't wait to see my family for the family gathering.

So, i want to wish everyone Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2009! May all of you be bless richfully for this coming of Christ birth celebration.

Happy Holidays everyone!

I Meet Awesome People

Jodi & Dr. John Ferner

Earl of Cranbrook
Book: Mammals of Borneo: Field Keys and Annotated Checklist

Dr. Don E. Wilson
Book: Mammals of The World

Dr. Han, Mr. Rob & Mr. Engkamat

These people are in their own expertise in science and most of them have done a great work in conservation.

Pentail Treeshrews Trapping

Live-wire cage trap was used to traps the pentail treeshrews. The traps was set-up above the ground either on the tree branches, vines or lianas. These animal is arboreal species so, it is impossible to trap them on the ground. Banana was used as bait and it was the most effective baits that i used to trap treeshrews.

The way i hold this treeshrews is not correct because i hold it too tight. This is the firtst time i hold it with my bare hands so, i am not confident i can handle it but actually i did it well.

While i am doing the inspection on the conditions of this animal, i found a few scars on it's tail. I am not sure what caused that injury but i guess it maybe because of the sharp thorn-covered rattan palms or fighting. I am just guessing because i am not sure too.

During our trapping, we also caught the Dark-tailed Tree Rat (Niviventer cremoriventer). As you can see, this rat's tail also damaged. It was almost broken but it is not because of the cage traps but an old damaged that maybe because of fighting.

Bats Survey - Interesting Experienced

Dr. Don E. Wilson. The bat's man. I was lucky to have a chance working with him in one of our field trip for bat's survey.

“The Tough Life" - Louise Emmons and Treeshrews

By Chris Eckstrom
International Wildlife, 1996

On a moonless night in northern Borneo, ecologist Louise Emmons steps into the black maw of the rain forest and disappears. The air is steamy. Insects are screaming. Only the panning movement of Emmons’s flashlight beam identifies her position.

This is the hour when big mammals stir--clouded leopards, elephants, sun bears. But Emmons is after more ephemeral quarry. At the base of a white-skinned mengaris tree, she switches off her light and waits. When she flicks on her beam moments later, the tree sparkles with tiny diamonds of light, flashing up and down the trunk like electric fireflies. “Treeshrews,” she whispers. “Pentails.” Her light catches the eyeshine of four mini-mouse forms with bottlebrush tails before they all skitter off in a tangle of vines.

Few scientists who work in Borneo ever see a treeshrew, least of all the elusive pentail--the only nocturnal member of a family that includes sixteen species, “all neurotic,” says Emmons. Treeshrews are small animals resembling squirrels with glass-button eyes and cone-shaped noses. They bounce around like pinballs through the rainforests of southern Asia, moving so fast that you notice little more than a rustle and a musky whiff.

Misnamed and long misclassified, treeshrews are not shrews (which are strictly insectivorous), and most are ground-dwellers (though many retreat to trees when alarmed). For much of this century treeshrews were believed to be primitive primates, which stimulated great scientific interest in their shadowy lives. Now fallen from the lofty rank of primate, treeshrews are classed in their own separate order, Scandentia. But despite the earlier flurry of scientific attention, almost nothing was known about them in the wild until renowned field biologist Louise Emmons set her sights on them in 1989 and headed for the island of Borneo, home to more species of treeshrews than any place else in the world.

“I had heard a lot of stories about them,” Emmons says, “and I wanted to find out what was true.” What she discovered, after scientific sleuthing that most experts would write off as impossible, was a snapshot of a mysterious maternal care system and an understanding of how these tiny dynamoes subdivide rain forest niches and scamper a daily energetic tightrope to survive.

“I found out early on that life is tough for treeshrews,” Emmons says. “They work 12 hours a day, 365 days a year. There’s no excess in their lives. They live on the edge.” These words could easily apply to Emmons herself. One of the world’s foremost mammalogists, Louise Emmons has dedicated her life to fieldwork in tropical rainforests from Madagascar to Brazil. Her work with the under celebrated creatures and fine tunings of ecological processes often yields the kind of knowledge that finds its way into reference books. Although she holds positions as research associate at both the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History, she lives on modest research grants, working at field camps from Gabon to New Guinea.

Emmons is also a member of Conservation International’s famous RAP team--for Rapid Assessment Program--an all-star ensemble of field scientists who drop in and out of wilderness hot spots around the world to do fast-sketch surveys of their biodiversity to help determine the most important areas to protect. Of Emmons’s work on RAP, Conservation International Presidebt Russ Mittermeier says, “What she can learn in two weeks would take anyone else years.”

Emmons herself is a rare breed, one of a dwindling number of hard-core field scientists whose work connects the scattered dots of what we know about the natural world to create an overall image of how life works. A champion of the world’s little critters--the squirrels, bats, mouse opossums, rodents, and pygmy everythings--Emmons likes working with the overlooked and unglamorous. “So little is known about the small fauna,” she says, “that everything is a new discovery. And I have the fun of putting the puzzle of their ecology together from scratch.”

When she set off for Borneo to ferret out the unknowns about treeshrews, Emmons carried some ideas from captive studies done in the 1960’s by a scientist named Bob Martin, whose work showed that treeshrews have a bizarre parental strategy unlike that of any other mammal.

“I was so intrigued by them,” Emmons said. “In captivity, mother treeshrews visit their babies once every two days--for two minutes. They nurse and run,” she said, explaining a maternal care system that has been called ‘minimalist motherhood.’ “I wanted to know, was this true in the wild? And why?” Emmons asked. “I knew it was going to be hard work. No one had ever even found a treeshrew nest. And nothing was known about the ecology of all these different species,” she added. “How do they all live together in one place?”

How do you find a nest of unknown description visited by an animal you can hardly see inside the most complex environment on earth? In Borneo, Emmons captured treeshrews in banana-baited traps, fitted them with radio collars, and began to track them. Most were females. “Think about it,” said Emmons. “You’re in the middle of the rain forest, following the radio signal of a tiny animal that’s too nervous to even be in your sight. She runs all day long. Once every forty-eight hours, she goes to one spot for two minutes. How do you find that spot? You can be standing right there with a radio antenna and see nothing. It’s a needle in a haystack.”

Just after she began her work, Emmons captured the same female two weeks in a row. The first time the treeshrew was pregnant; the second time, she was lactating. “So I knew--aha! Baby treeshrews. I decided to track her,” said Emmons. “The very next day I stopped by a trail, and right next to me, she popped out of a hole in a tree. What a piece of luck! I just knew, well there it is.”

Emmons set up a blind and watched. Every two days the mother treeshrew came--for two minutes. “So Bob Martin was right. It was all true in the wild. And this was the first time it was ever seen,” Emmons said.

But what happens inside the nest? Baby treeshrews are born helpless, hairless, and blind. How do they stay warm, avoid predators? During the month they spend in the nest, their mother visits them for a total of 30 minutes. No other mammal mothers do so little for their young.

While Emmons was tracking treeshrews in Borneo, back at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., Emmons’s colleague, research zoologist Miles Roberts, was raising treeshrews in his laboratory. To see what was happening in the nest boxes, he placed video cameras inside--and discovered some amazing things. When a mother treeshrew visits her young, she springs inside the nest, raises her forelegs and presents herself for nursing. The babies grope for her, nurse fast, and roll back with balloon bellies full of milk as the mother leaps out two minutes later. Neither mother nor young makes a sound. Most treeshrews have two young, and Roberts found that energetically, two is the optimum litter size: In the absence of a parent, the babies snuggle up and keep each other warm.

Roberts also discovered that the fat content of a treeshrew mother’s milk may be second only to that of seals and other pinnipeds. The milk’s richness may enable the babies to grow fast with so few feedings. The video cameras revealed more. The babies groom each other--a job done by parents in most mammals--so that nothing soils the nest that might tip off a predator to their presence. That fact was borne out in the wild: The nest and baby treeshrews Emmons found had no detectable scent.

“Everything points to predator avoidance as one reason for this bizarre system,” Emmons explained. “Adult treeshrews have a strong smell that could lead predators right to the young. The mother I watched never took the same route to her nest,” she added. “I also found that treeshrew care is not as minimalist as we think. The wild treeshrew mother spent time with her babies for three weeks after they left the nest. No one ever knew that before.”

Emmons expanded her treeshrew work, radio-collaring males and females of five species, and steadily began to uncover the kind of subtleties that wow her colleagues. When Emmons worked in Gabon twenty years ago, her painstaking work showed that nine species of squirrels can all coexist because each consumes different foods in different layers of the forest. In Borneo, when she asked the same question about treeshrews she found that although all eat insects (and fruit when they can find it), the species separate on a very fine point: how and where they hunt. “Each treeshrew has a distinct feeding tactic,” Emmons says, observing that one treeshrew gleans black ants at night, another digs earthworms under leaf litter, while a third hunts caterpillars by looking up under the leaves of understory shrubs.

Emmons made more connections. Treeshrews have simple digestive tracts (“it’s just a tube”)--and she found that they pass food more quickly than any other animal but fruit bats. “What that means is that a treeshrew has to eat all day long,” she explained. “A treeshrew can never afford to rest.”

One grueling hallmark of Emmons’s fieldwork is continual tracking, for several days in a row, of an individual animal. “When I’m following an animal, I get a feeling for the shape of its daily life, where it goes, what it does all day long. I want to know what it means to be a small mammal out there in the forest,” she says. “This is the nitty-gritty of ecology.”

She once followed a female ocelot in the Amazon rainforest. “I found that an ocelot has to work up to eleven hours a day just to find enough to eat,” Emmons said. “But this particular female had young. I followed her once for twenty-three hours. She just walked and walked. She walked until there were no more hours left in the day before she finally stopped. She just couldn’t get enough,” Emmons remembered. “And she lost her young.”

“Treeshrews and ocelots have exactly the same problem,” Emmons said. “They both live on the edge.” Then how do female treeshrews find the extra energy they need--up to twice as much--to raise young? “In captivity, treeshrews breed continuously. In the wild they never do. The bottleneck is food,” Emmons explains. “If you already run all twelve daylight hours each day to find food, how are you going to get twice as much?” Emmons found that treeshrews breed when fruiting peaks occur in the forest: The additional calories from fruit provide the extra margin for raising young. “Energetics may be related to their maternal care too,” she said. “If the mother treeshrew doesn’t have to run back to the nest every night, the energy she saves may be crucial.”

The tough life has its rewards, both for treeshrews and hard-working scientists. During her fieldwork in Borneo, Emmons and two Malay colleagues made a serendipitous discovery: They found the fruit of the rare rafflesia, the world’s largest flower--a garish red blossom up to three feet wide. “No one had ever seen the fruit of this species before,” Emmons said. “We just hiked up and there it was.” It looked like a chocolate-brown canteloupe--and something had taken a few bites.

“So I said, ‘Let’s build a blind and watch!’ We did, and I took the four a.m. shift,” Emmons said. “Just before sunrise I saw something sneak up to the fruit. And what was it but a treeshrew!” she said. “He hung on to a tree with his hind feet and reached down inside this fruit, which looks like a bowl of custard filled with millions of tiny seeds. It tastes like fermented coconut, and it’s a pool of pure oil--a mother lode of energy for a tiny forest animal.”

Later, a squirrel made a brief visit. “Both are ideal dispersers of these seeds because rafflesias are parasitic to a certain vine, and that’s exactly where treeshrews and squirrels run. They would spread these sticky seeds on vines all over the forest. It makes perfect sense,” she said. “And it was so much fun. For us it was a twenty-four-hour mental fling,” Emmons added. “For the treeshrew it was like a big ice cream cone.”

It wasn’t until she returned home that Emmons realized that she had pushed the boundaries of science once more. The rafflesia fruit was a new discovery, as were its furtive consumers. “Most people think that everything in nature is known,” Emmons says. “The truth is almost the opposite--especially for the smaller animals. Nobody knows what a civet does all day long, or a jaguarundi.

“With small mammals like treeshrews I can study their whole lives, and several generations, in a short period,” Emmons says. “And because their populations rise and fall according to smaller environmental changes, they can tell us more about resources in the forest, and what the boundaries are for survival.

“I’m interested in these animals that live on the edge,” she says. “They make us ask, what are the limits?” What are the limits--for a treeshrew, a rain forest, or for bigger mammals and other ecosystems? There may be something of Louise Emmons in the tough cases she tackles, and something for us all in the answers she finds.

*Louise Emmons is one of the field biologist that i admire the most. Her works on Bornean Treeshrews is one of the important reference for the treeshrews ecology. As i said in my previous posts, it is not an easy work to become a good field ecologist.

The Waterfall

The waterfall is about 7m high and the water is so cold. I visit twice last year for my small mammals sampling and i get quite a good results. We trapped about 46 individuals from 10 different species. The most abundant species was Tupaia picta (Painted Treeshrew). In the same year, another group was also carried out the herps inventory in this area. The findings was so interesting too. I think they described a new species of frogs but the journal is not yet published.

I was amazed by these beautiful and amazing waterfall.

This is another one which is shorter waterfall.

Hardwork & Curiosity

Working in the forest is not easy and it takes the highest level of my passion in this type of job that i choose. Once, i cried when i fall down the steep ridges while i trying to reach where i set up my small mammals traps. Enter the bush without knowing what is inside there and searching for what are they? Tired, sweating, starving, full of combination of emotions but the work have to be done. I still remember one of the oldest herpetologist that i ever work with. He is 86 years old and his passion in his work still make him eager to enter the forest and looking for frogs, lizards and snakes. I really admire his determination and passion. It is very rare to find people like him.

If there is something moving or something strange, just a glimpse will steal my attention. I will try to find what is inside there. In the beginning of this job, i was really excited and anything can trigger my curiosity. Learn on how to do a good observations and describe what animal i found. Skills develop by practice. I hope i can pass down some of the skills that i have before i lost my memory but it is not easy to find a good protege. Someday, somewhere...and i will learn more from nature too.

Beer-Drinking Tree Shrews: Sober As Judges

By Michelle Trudeau

Photo of a pentail tree shrew in the wild, wearing a small radio collar. Courtesy of Annette Zitzman.

All Things Considered, July 28, 2008 · In the rain forest of Malaysia, scientists have found a small mammal, closely related to primates, whose major source of food is a type of beer.

It's believed to be the only animal other than humans that chronically consumes alcohol. But this animal never appears drunk, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This little critter, the pentail tree shrew, is about 4 inches long; it weighs just a few ounces.

"It looks like a mix between a squirrel and a mouse," says Frank Weins, a biologist from Bayreuth University in Germany, who lived in western Malaysia studying these tiny mammals.

"They have this very strange naked tail. The tip looks like a bird feather."

With big eyes that face forward, and tiny grasping fingers and toes, the tree shrew is an evolutionary cousin of primates. They're nocturnal and spend most nights out in the jungle drinking nectar.

"They walk up and down the cluster of flowers and lick off nectar from the different flower buds," Weins says.

But they have one favorite food source: the bertam palm, whose flowers have a very strong and distinctive smell. "They smell like a brewery," Weins says.

In fact, the flower buds function as brewing chambers — they have been invaded by previously unknown species of yeast, which ferment the nectar into frothy alcohol.

"The maximum alcohol concentration that we recorded was 3.8 percent," Weins says. "That's in the range of a beer."

And the tree shrews spend several hours each night drinking this palm beer. Weins calculates that the tree shrew is imbibing what would be the human equivalent of nine glasses of wine an evening. However, the pentail tree shrew shows no signs of being drunk.

"They move normally on the palms when they go for the nectar," Weins says. "There's no sign of motor incoordination or other odd behaviors. They just move as efficiently as they would on any other tree."

Weins says there are no pentail tree shrews in captivity, so it hasn't been possible to do lab tests to detect intoxication.

But with jungle predators always lurking, Weins says, it would be very risky for a little mammal in the wild to be tipsy or drunk.

And that leads Weins to believe that the tree shrew probably has a specially evolved metabolism that detoxifies the alcohol quickly, keeping the alcohol concentration in the brain very low.

As a result, the tree shrew is able to detoxify alcohol more efficiently than its primate cousins: humans.

Read The Study:

• Chronic Intake of Fermented Floral Nectar

Something Come Up In My Mind

These past few weeks i am a little bit confused with my own posts in this blog. Not only because what is actually this blog about but i am a little bit piss off with the settings. I tried to make space in between paragraph but it doesn't work. There is still no space. So, i don't like how my posts look like. As for myself, i don't like reading something like that. It is not neat. So, i keep trying to do something with the templates and changing templates too. I am not sure what is actually happen. I am not good in designing websites. I just follow the instructions. Still far to learn about creating or designing my blog.

About this blog. What is actually i want to share in here? A lots of things mixed up already. From the first place i create this blog because i want to improve my writing skills and i am not sure if i am improve now. But then, these past few months, the contents is really upside down. But i think i have to be focus with what i really want to share in this blog. I take leave from my work for three months so i don't have any interesting field works that i can share here. So, that is one of the reason, i don't know what to share about my works anymore since i am not working. After think back, i still want to do posting about wildlife and nature. I love them very much and still hoping that early next year i will be able to get back to work to get close to them again.

I will posts mostly about the animals that i have work on and what i experienced before. Even though it will be my past experienced but i think it will worth sharing here. I was feel blessed from the first place that i have the great opportunity to do this kind of work so, i will share it with you guys. Since i am doing a lots of reading now, anything that interests me will be share too.



Related Posts:

• Part 4: Dream Come True
• Reflections
  

The IUCN Red List Of Threatened Species - Treeshrews

The treeshrews (or tree shrews) are small mammals native to the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. They make up the families Tupaiidae (19 species) and Ptilocercidae (1 species) and the entire order Scandentia. There are 20 species in 5 genera which are Ptilocercus (1), Anathana (1), Dendrogale (2), Tupaia (15) and Urogale (1). Of 20 species 10 are occur in Borneo with seven endemics species.

According to the IUCN Red List Of Threatened Species (2008), two species listed as Endangered (Tupaia chrysogaster and T. nicobarica), 15 species as Least Concern (Ptilocecus lowii, Anathana ellioti, Dendrogale murina, T. belangeri, T. glis, T. gracilis, T. javanica, T. longipes, T. minor, T. montana, T. palawanensis, T. picta, T. splendidula, T. tana and Urogale everetti) and three species as Data Deficient (D. melanura, T. dorsalis and T. moellendorffi). Both Endangered species is not Bornean species. T. chrysogaster occurs in North and South of Pagai Islands and Sipora (Mentawai Islands, Indonesia), meanwhile T. nicobarica can be found in Great and Little Nicobar Islands of India.

For more information about IUCN Red List please click at the title of this post and you will redirect to IUCN Red List webpage.

Related Posts:

• A Case Of Mistaken Identity - Treeshrews
• In It's Own Order (Treeshrews)

How Did Animals Get Their Names?

Really in many different ways, from many different places, and from many different languages!

Ducks, for example, are birds who "duck" in the water. Their name comes from an old English word duce, which means a "diver."

The Arabic word zirafoh, which means "long neck," gave the long-necked giraffe its name.

Two Greek words, hippos, which means "horse" and potamus, which means "river," were put together to give us the "river horse" we know today as the hippopotamus.

The rhinoceros also got its name from two Greek words, Tinos, which means "nose" and keras, which means "horn." And "horn on the nose" is a good description of this animal which has just that, a horn on its nose.

Poodles got their names from the German word pudel, which was short for pudelhund, which means "a dog that splashes in water."

The ancient Latin word, leopardus, which means "spotted lion," gave the leopard its name.
Bulls got their name from the old Anglo-Saxon word belan, which means to "roar" or "bellow."

Both the Latin word carcharus and the Greek word karckarios mean "sharp teeth," and it is from these two words that we get the name of the feared shark.

If you've ever taken a close look at a porpoise, you might see a slight resemblance to the face of a hog. Perhaps the ancient Romans saw this similarity and called the porpoise porous pisces in their Latin tongue. Porcus pisces means "hog-fish."

The salmon, which is known for its ability to leap out of the water as it swims upstream, also has a name of Latin origin. Salmo, in Latin, means "leaping fish."

We can thank the Danish language for their word mackreel, which means "spots." For it is this word which was the origin of the spotted fish we know today as mackerel.

Any fisherman will vouch for the fact that the trout is an avid eater and will go after any bait that moves. This greedy fish got its name from the Latin trocta, which means just that, "greedy fish."

Source:

• Big Site Of Amazing Facts

In It's Own Order (Treeshrews)

Author: Wagner, 1855

In the past, treeshrews have commonly been considered basal members of the order Primates, or united with macroscelidids in the "insectivoran" clade Menotyphla. However, as a group they have no immediate living relatives and are best classified at ordinal rank (Butler, 1972, 1980; Dene et al., 1978; Luckett, 1980; McKenna and Bell, 1997). At a deeper phylogenetic level, scandentians apparently form a natural group with dermopterans and primates (Murphy et al., 2001b). Representatives of the order are confined to southern, eastern, and SE Asia both currently and in the fossil record, which extends back to the Middle Eocene in east Asia (McKenna and Bell, 1997). Most previous workers have arranged Scandentia as a monofamilial order, but recognition of two families (Tupaiidae and Ptilocercidae) more aptly conveys the anatomical disparity evident among the living treeshrews.

Despite the attention paid to the higher-level phylogenetic relationships of treeshrews, a modern revision of species-level taxonomy in the group is still unavailable; the most recent comprehensive review remains that of Lyon (1913), a thorough but now long-outdated work. Chasen (1940), Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1966), and Corbet (in Corbet and Hill, 1992) produced regional lists of named forms, but not critical systematic treatments, and the latter two listings are beset by overlumping. This account is likewise no substitute for a comprehensive systematic review of the order, but in its preparation I have examined all treeshrew specimens (including types) in the collections of the American Museum of Natural History, Field Museum of Natural History, Museum of Comparative Zoology, and National Museum of Natural History, as well as a number of type specimens stored in European collections.

*Source: http://www.bucknell.edu



Related Posts:

• A Case Of Mistaken Identity - Treeshrews

The Spirit Of Christmas Is In Town

Our Hairy Friends

This two cats belong to three of us when my friends and i rent a house in Bintulu but now since two of us move out (me and the other friend) so these two cats under my friend care which still stayed at the house. This two cats was an orphan cat brought from a tree plantation nursery by our friend. It was a pair, male and female. We named them, Chum (male) and Chan (female). We like to make fun of their names, Chum-mot (comot=ugly) and Chan-tik (cantik=pretty) and now we have a new names for them. Since Chum have a stripes fur just like tiger, my friends name him Tiger-Chum. During my last visit his name reminds me of Tiger Beer so i gave Chan new name too, Vodka-Chan. Hahahaha...They like to play with boxes and this boxes was for my packings but these two cats play hide and seek inside it.

Vodka-Chan not afraid of anything. She like to climb up on this divider wall and also up on our rooftop. She only afraid of one male cat maybe belongs to our neighbor that use to flirts with her. Hehehe.. If that collar-bell cat visit her, she will run and hide inside the house.

Tiger-Chum is a pretty cat but he is not as brave as his sister. He scared of height and dislike strangers but he is a good hunter. He always come back with birds, frogs and lizards even how many times i warn and remind him to catch only rats. He won't listen. Just like a cat..:)

Mammals Species Of The World Online Database

Mammal Species of the World, 3rd edition (MSW3) is a database of mammalian taxonomy. It is hoped that this database on the World Wide Web can be used as a convenient on-line reference for identifying or verifying recognized scientific names and for taxonomic research. The names are organized in a hierarchy that includes Order, Suborder, Family, Subfamily, Genus, Species and Subspecies. Records include the following fields:

1. Scientific name
2. Author's name and year described
3. Original publication citation
4. Common name
5. Type Species
6. Type Locality
7. Distribution
8. Comments
9. Status
10. Synonyms

The citation for this work is: Don E. Wilson & DeeAnn M. Reeder (editors). 2005. Mammal Species of the World. A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed), Johns Hopkins University Press, 2,142 pp. (Available from Johns Hopkins University Press, 1-800-537-5487 or (410) 516-6900, or at http://www.press.jhu.edu).

This third edition is enhanced by the identification of subspecies, and by the inclusion of authority information for all synonyms. Further information about the book and about the contents of each field can be found in the preface and introductory material.

This online list was compiled under the auspices of the American Society of Mammalogists. Copyright 2005 Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights are reserved. The data in this checklist of mammal species of the world are being presented for non-commercial, personal, and collections management use only. Copying or redistributing these data in any manner for personal or corporate gain is not permitted. A list of the authors responsible for various portions of the text can be found here.

For an analysis of new species found in the third edition see: D. M. Reeder , K. M. Helgen, and D. E. Wilson. 2007. Global Trends and Biases in New Mammal Species Discoveries. Occasional Papers, Museum of Texas Tech University, 269:1-36. pdf [ click here].

This project is in collaboration with the Division of Mammals of the Department of Vertebrate Zoology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and The American Society of Mammalogists.

The scientific names from the MSW3 database are available as a custom dictionary that can be used with various Microsoft Office applications. To download the dictionary, right-click on this link and choose 'Save Target As ...' (or the equivalent, depending on the browser that you are using). [Installation instructions for custom dictionaries vary depending on the version of Microsoft Office that you are using. To start, try here.] Thanks to Doug Kelt, UC Davis, for creating and sharing this dictionary.

*Source: http://www.bucknell.edu/msw3/

Endemic Species List

At last i come up with this list after gone through the reference (Wilson & Reeder, 2005; Yasuma et al., 2003; Payne et al., 2000). Here is the species list for endemic species of mammals in Borneo that i got. After gone through this three reference i will say that i prefer to use Wilson & Reeder (2005) and i can't rely too much on Yasuma et al. (2003). The other one Payne et al. (2000) is more updated and only a few species not match with Wilson & Reeder (2005). I will say that the most updated and relieable source that i think i can depends on is Wilson & Reeder (2005), Mammals Species of The World. A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd Eds). It is available online and can be found using this url http://www.bucknell.edu/msw3/.

Hope this will give some info for those that doing zoology study and it's about mammals.

1. Suncus ater
2. Crocidura foetida
3. Tupaia longipes
4. Tupaia splendidula
5. Tupaia montana
6. Tupaia gracilis
7. Tupaia picta
8. Tupaia dorsalis
9. Dendrogale melanura
10. Hipposideros coxi
11. Myotis gomantongensis
12. Hypsugo (Pipistrellus) kitcheneri
13. Arielulus (Pipistrellus) cuprosus
14. Callosciurus baluensis
15. Callosciurus adamsi
16. Callosciurus orestes
17. Sundasciurus jentinki
18. Sundasciurus brookei
19. Glyphotes simus
20. Lariscus hosei
21. Dremomys everetti
22. Exilisciurus exilis
23. Exilisciurus whiteheadi
24. Rheithrosciurus macrotis
25. Petaurillus hosei
26. Petaurillus emiliae
27. Aeromys thomasi
28. Rattus baluensis
29. Niviventer rapit
30. Maxomys alticola
31. Maxomys ochraceiventer
32. Maxomys baeodon
33. Chiropodomys major
34. Chiropodomys muroides
35. Haeromys margarettae
36. Haeromys pusillus
37. Pithecheirops otion
38. Thecurus crassispinis
39. Presbytis hosei
40. Presbytis rubicunda
41. Presbytis frontata
42. Nasalis larvatus
43. Hylobates muelleri
44. Melogale everetti
45. Hemigalus hosei
46. Catopuma badia
47. Muntiacus artherodes

Counting Species - Endemic Species Of Mammals in Borneo

Counting species. That is what i do. From my previous reference i count it is about 47 species of endemic mammals in Borneo. This is based on reference from Payne et al. (2000), Yasuma et al. (2003), Wilson & Reeder (2005) and some other articles. However, after i send it to my supervisor, he want me to recount it back. Arghh...i have to redo it again. Counting..counting and counting based on http://www.bucknell.edu/msw3/ i made a few mistakes based on the distribution of each species that i list according to this online database. So, now i count about (47-2+1=46), so it is about 46 species. I add three to Yasuma et al. (2003). Again i have to figure it out. What species is that might be?

I thought i am done with this but i have to do it again. Hmmm...i don't want to pass the wrong information to my juniors in this uni. They may use my works as their reference after this. So, i have to count it correctly even though i already have a headache. My head spinning looking at this long listing. Yaiks!!!

Rainbow & Sunset

The weather is not that good today. There were lightning and some storm, with rains and after a while i saw this rainbow on the sky. This view was taken from my window at my dorm.

Then just before dusk i come out from my dorm and take a walk outside my hostel. I saw sunset. It was so beautiful.

Meeting My Little Friends

I have dinner with my little friends family the night before i leave Bintulu. This little girl really love to sing and i love her very much as if she is my own niece.

This is her youngest sister but she is still not that close to me. She afraid of strangers and a little bit choosy but i love her. My cute little friend.

Here we are.....I will miss them very much. As i said to them, when i visit them next time maybe both of them already grown up an become a beautiful teenagers an i am sure i am older when that time is come..:p

Happy Hour With My Ex-Workmates

Did i mention that i am resign from my current job in Bintulu? Hmm..maybe i miss that part. So, the main purpose of my visit to Bintulu this time was to settle all my personal things before i am leaving Bintulu. Pass my resign letter to my boss, meeting my fellow friends and packing my stuff and bring it back to Sibu. Three days seems to be not enough. I have my lunch with my bestfriend and also my workmate after my last visit to the office. I am so mean actually, during our lunch, i didn't tell her that i am resigining because i don't know how to tell her. But later the next day when i visit her mom, i told her that i am leaving and she alreday knew something is happening. But, wherever i go i will always have her and her family in my heart. They are so nice to me. On that day her mom prepare me lunch.:)

We have a happening night with my officemates and my housemates at our house. It was so crazy but fun. We have one bottle of JD and B. Sort of farewell for me but whatever it is, i will always remember that night. Thank you so much for all you guys have done for me. I am sure we will still keep in touch.

Mount Hosanna Chapel

Every time i drove back to Sibu i will have a glimpse on this white building on the hill in Sri Aman Division. I always drive alone so i never notice about this sign board apposite the road, only notice there is a white building on the hill. Until this trip i stop by and took a photo of this building and know that this is a Mount Hosanna Chapel. It was because i have my friend accompany me driving this time so we stop here but not going up to the hill. Maybe next visit i will enter this chapel.

The view is so beautiful and i just love it very much. When i arrive in Bintulu i told my other friend about this white building and she told me some people went to that Chapel for a thanksgiving prayer or petition for a healing. So, i am hoping i will drop by and say prayers in this Chapel. May God bless everyone that notice this beautiful house of God. Amen.

Seven Hours Drive

I arrive at 5pm yesterday. I online for a few minutes but then i am very tired to write anything so i just do some reading without any writings. Wow...it was a long drive and some more i am alone. But this is the fourth time so, i feel more brave to be alone on the long journey like that. Twice almost hit by the car from the front but i am lucky because my Guardian Angel is still take a good care of me. It was not my fault i am on the right lane but that two cars steal my lane but we are lucky nothing happen yesterday.

My visit to Bintulu was great because i manage to meet quite numbers of my friends there. My aerobic friends, my workmates, my clubbing friends and some others friends but i can not make it to join our High School Reunion at Miri on the 29th Nov. It was another 3 hours drive so i decide not to go because the next day i have to drive back to Sibu which takes 3 hours drive from Bintulu. Besides i have to pack all my stuff at Bintulu and bring back to Sibu. So many things to be settled.

Long hours of driving really test my patient and have to stay awake. At some point i didn't realize that i off the speed limit so, i hope i will not get a love letter from the traffic police. Whatever it is i enjoy my drive yesterday. Safe and sound.

Off To Bintulu

I will be drive back to Sibu and then to Bintulu tomorrow. I will be away for a few days and maybe looking for more new things too. But actually i am going to meet my friends and doing some stuff back to Bintulu. I have so many plan to do there but i have so limited time for that. Anyway, time is something but even it is so little time as long as i use it wisely, i am sure i can have great time with my friends there before i leave.

For sure i miss to write something in my blog too. Until next Monday, then i will be able to write here again. For sure i will miss reading and following my friends activity in their blogs too. Nevermind, i will cope with that later. The main things to do now, drive carefully and arrive safely to my destination tomorrow. Till then.....Bintulu i come...

The Palm Beach

This is the Palm Beach at Sematan, Kuching. As usual when it is the first time, i will enjoy it so much. Kind of interesting because it's almost a few years i didn't swim at the beach. Wow! Now i realize that i was always in the jungle and enjoying nature there. I went to Bintulu beach (Tjg. Batu, Similajau, Bintulu Promenade) but never enter the water because it was too risky. There was a few cases of drawn at Tjg. Batu so i don't want to take that risk. By the way, i really like this beach. Just ignore my presence in that photo and you can see how beautiful the sea is. There are two island behind and it is for turtle conservation so it is not recreational island.

I was so stunned by this beautiful beach so i forgot to take more photos and i just swim and swim and swim. Playing around with the strong waves. There were a few friends of my friend trying to surf here and they did it very well because the waves is huge and strong that day. I am not sure if i still have a chance to go to this beautiful beach again but maybe some other beach after this. As always, travel and adventure will never ends....

Climbing Lesson

He teach us on how to do the belay means that the one that responsible on the ground while the partner is doing the climb. I never done this one before because i am small and light so i can't lift the climbers that heavier than me.

This is the first time for Phil to do the belay so i help him just to cover up in case he loose the rope. While he climb he is telling us on the right skills of climbing. Always push up the body using feet and not trying too hard to reach up using hands because it will make our arms muscle over stretch. That is what happen to me because i never care on where i put my feet as long as my hand can reach something above my head.

This is the tricky part for this climb wall because we have to figure out what is the best position for our feet so that our hands can reach the secret holes above our head. This is where i always have difficulties and for this trip i only success once for two try.

Aha..this is some of the members for this climb and i met up with my long lost senior in high school after almost 12 years and lucky i still can recognize her. Small world..:)

The Climb Wall

This wall is the toughest wall for a beginner like me and actually there is a different level at this wall too. The Chimney wall is the easiest one amongst the other three at this wall. All the senior climbers are doing their climbing here. As for me, i am not doing this one because it is very tough for me. So for this time i only climb at the Baby wall. I am still crawling because i am a baby..hehehehe..

The Baby wall have two level here. The one on the right side is really easy because there is a lots of holes that i can stick my finger in and put my feet on. However, the other one is harder because there is one part that i can't find a good place to put my feet on and for the first try i finish this climb but for the second time, i am quit. I think because i am hungry, it is almost lunch time so lack of energy. For this second time join them, i feel it is quite good because i learn some more new things.

Rock Climbing and Swim at the Beach

I call my fried to inform him that i wil not join their trip tomorrow for rock climbing because i am afraid that i will suffer the muscle pain again. However, when he told me that they will going to the beach after the rock climb, i am very excited. It's been a while i didn't go for a swim at the beach. So, i decide to go instead of doing nothing tomorrow.

It will be so much fun and for sure i will take a photo of it. The beach will be a new place for me because i never been to any beach in Kuching before. Hmm..can't wait for the new things, new place and new adventure.

What Is In My Mind?

This is the wild animal called Small-toothed Palm Civet (Arctogalidia trivirgata) and it was kept by local people for about two years. The story behind of this little creature kept by local people as a pets is that, it was a juvenile when they found it on the tree that they cut for log and it's mum was dead. So, they bring it home and kept is as a pets. Wild animal as a pets? Hmmm...i prefer to see them in the forest even though it is very difficult to observed them but it was an interesting things to do. Trying to understand their life likes in the forest, in their own home territory, habitat. When we understand more how this animals funtcion in the ecosystem then we will know how to appreciate their existence in the forest. Hmm..what am i mumbling here? I think better to let them in their own space of life.

Domestic animals....cats. I think this is Persian cat, that sold in the market. I am not really bother about domestic animals because they are meant to be pets so we can keep them at home. But, have to take a good care of them. Giving foods, shelter and make sure their are in a good health. They are our responsibility if we decide to have one of them.

See this little dog face? He really want to come out from this cage and asking for an owner. Anybody? Please buy me and give me home. Hmmm...soon it will be.

I Got The Aerial Photo of Rajang River

Ops...there is an aeroplane wing in the photo, not a best shot but it shows i am on the plane taking this photo..i don't have so much outdoor activities right now and i found a few photos that i have taken before. This is a photo of Rajang River in Sibu area.

This one is the main Rajang River basin (i think so) and it really looks very amazing from the air.

Aha..i like this one...the tributary from the main river. It looks really nice, it is just look like a tree branch..:)