Bako National Park, Malaysian Borneo – April 23rd

Bako Park is the country’s oldest national park, established in 1957. It is home to many unique and rare species, including proboscis monkeys and insect-eating carnivorous plants.

 This tree snake is a Bornean Keeled Green Pit Viper. They are poisonous with heat-sensing pits on the sides of their heads. I shot this with the telephoto.

 A red dragonfly. Joani’s former brother-in-law, with his Ph.D. in entomology specializing in dragonflies, would be jealous.

A red fiddler crab and blue fiddler crabs. They can be either left or right-handed!

Proboscis monkeys, unique to Borneo, locally called orang-belanda ("Dutch man") because the Dutch colonizers had similar big bellies and noses. Videos below:

Below, Mud Skippers, an ancient fish species that crawls out of the water and wriggles around on land for a while, breathing through a froth of bubbles around its gills. A very inconvenient fish for creationists.

This is a nest of stinger-less bees, which I did not even know existed.

This is a fairly poor picture of a Flying Lemur just hanging around on a tall tree trunk. Couldn’t get a good picture in the heavy canopy shadow. They don’t really fly; they just jump long distances from branch to branch.

This is a silver leaf-monkey, unique to Borneo. They also jump aggressively from branch to branch; which we saw them do, but too quickly to get a video.

 Joani is sweating heavily because we climbed up to the sandstone crown of the park, 1300 feet above the jungle floor. This is where the carnivorous plants are. You can see where the monsoon run-off has washed the vegetation away exposing the sandstone.. Because this is not volcanic rock, the soil is not particularly fertile and lacks minerals. The plants need their nutrients from somewhere; insects are as good a source as any.

This is a small carnivorous ant-eating pitcher plant, named because of its shape. The pitcher collects water and sweetens it with nectar to attract ants. They climb down and drink but can’t get out because the sides are slippery and have tiny downward-pointing spikes. The Hotel California for ants. The plant secretes enzymes to digest the ants and get its nutrients and minerals.

This is a bigger and different colored species of pitcher plant. It has flower-like coloring to attract insects. You can see it’s about the size of a 20 oz. water bottle.

Partially digested bug bits inside the pitcher.

This is an ant plant, an example of three-way symbiosis. It is a parasite and lives off the tree but doesn’t kill it. Ants make their home inside the pod, which also collects some rainwater at the bottom. The ants excrete wastes, and die natural deaths, and fall into the water at the bottom. The host tree recovers minerals from the nutrient-rich water in the bottom of the pod.

An orangutan, native to Borneo and locally called orang-utan ("Forest man"). Seldom seen in Bako, our friend Joyce took this picture at the Semenggoh Wildlife Center, about an hour inland from the park.

Next: two days at sea and then two days at the Indonesian resort of Bali. A recreational-not-educational stop.