Photo credit: Dr. Konstans WellsI assist my friend meeting leaders of local people in our area yesterday. It was interesting and fun to get to know these important people in their village. Okay, that is not what I want to share today.
As we drive along one gravel road to reach another village, I saw something on the road. Road killed is normal here especially for domestic animal such as dogs, cats or chickens. But this time, I saw something else. It was white in color with a lot of guard hairs and the shape of the animal looks very familiar to me. I asked my friend to stop and let me have a clear look. I walk closer to the animal and guess what? It was a Moon Rat (Echinosorex gymnurus).
The moon rat is the largest gymnures and often found in primary and secondary lowland forest, mangrove swamps, rubber plantations and other cultivated areas. This species prefer moist areas, often near streams with thick ground vegetation. They are solitary species and do not seem to be tolerant of conspecifics. They eat varied with the main components of the diet is terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates such as earthworms, insects, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, crabs and molluscs. That is some of the information about this species.
I am not sure when it was killed but the whole body of this animal is still perfect. Only flies and some other insects already play their part and later on this body will decayed. I did take a few photos using my mobile phone but I cannot upload it in my computer so, I put a photo by Dr. Konstants Wells for you guys to see what this animal looks like.
How to prevent incident like this to be happen? I am not sure because if we tried to save the animal, our car may have an accident. It’s about own life or that animal life. My advice is that, just drive safely and always be alert of our surroundings. We cannot predict when this animal wants to across the road. I left this until here….Till then.
2 comments:
The same thing happens to animals like dogs and cats here too. Mostly, there are very many skunks that are found dead on the roads where I live. When a skunk is killed like this, it leaves a terrible smell that makes us choke. You're right about this kind of thing, it's difficult to stop it. Good information on the moon rat. It's a shame that one was killed.
I think everywhere we face the same problem. I forgot to mention about our local skunk which i used to see found dead on the road too. It was a Malay Badger or in Malay we called it Teledu. I am not sure why this animal was the most frequent hit by the car? I have no idea about it too...
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