Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Colugo sighting

I saw my first colugo Galeopterus variegatus a couple of years ago while doing some night shoot. As it turned out, and much to my pleasure, it was to be the first of many encounters. During the latest sighting, I was eventually successful in capturing some decent shots of this elusive critter, a most accomodating juvenile who does not mind to have pictures taken.

In my opinion, Colugo is the most iconic creature of the Singapore wilds, - it is the only gliding relative of the primates, unique to this region (only found in SE Asian forests), adorable yet untamable(it has not been successfully kept in any zoos before). It inhabits only the primary forests, a highly vulnerable habitat, and so itself is in a very precarious position. A recent survey shows there are still about 2 thousand of these creatures gliding around in Singapore's woods - which is not a bad number at all.





I was a little disappointed it did not glide for me this time, but took comfort in the assumption that it was probably not too intimidated by me. I wish this little critter all the best in Singapore's shrinking forest....

8 comments:

Claude said...

I did a web search after reading your post... fascinating creatures. I'll probably never be able to see one myself, thanks for sharing it with us...

Hermes said...

Only got my internet back yesterday and its fascinating posts like this that made me miss blogging so much.

Dirty Girl Gardening said...

Woooow, talk about Avatar animal!

Hon E said...

wow thats a weird one, I always thought its very rare and very surprise you can still see this in S'pore.

Hermes said...

Just thought of these good people in Germany who hold some rare plants you might like:

http://www.rareplants.de/shop/uploads/files_versions/Seedlist_www.rareplants.de.pdf

Hort Log said...

Hi Mr Brown,
thanks for the link - I will keep them in mind.

Hort Log said...

I invested in a lot of gadgets to get shots like these....camera, lens, flashes, powerful torches - burnt a big hole in the pocket, but looks promising so far

David said...

I've never seen anything so...ambiguous before. I think I'm in love.

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