Proboscis Monkey Blog

Wednesday 15-03-2006

Adi the photogenic Proboscis Photomodel.

We started phoning Sabah Ministry for Wildlife at KK Miss Jumrafa to get an answer on our question how many PM (Proboscis Monkeys) are living here in Sabah. But as expected she couldn’t say straight away. We had to ask that formally on paper or fax providing info for whom we write and why. So we might try later.
At 10.00 am we were picked up by Mr Sean Lee for a two hours’ ride to Labuk bay, a Proboscis Monkey sanctuary. As usual, we were riding through these sad palm oil plantations. During the drive this enthusiastic employee never stopped talking. Labuk is owned by Mr. Lee, a Chinese who opened Labuk Bay in May 2001 on 470 acres of land. It is about 300 meters wide and 6 km long and surrounded by Palm Oil fields. Our guide estimated that there are about 300 PM living here in approximately 25 groups. In our own opinion this is less. We saw the PM lunch visitor lists of the last few weeks, but there were never more than three or four groups in order to enjoy this ‘pancake attraction’. He hopes this mangrove will be protected and believes the government is also afraid of the possible tsunamis. He is convinced they have to protect the mangroves with the necessary food for our PM.
Every year more tourists get the unique possibility to see the unique Proboscis Monkey from a really close distance. At the start they just got their daily young green leaves from the Sonneratia trees in the mangrove, but some of them got used to the owner and broke into his kitchen and started eating the leftovers from his pancakes. They love it. It’s a  product of corn flour, (no sugar) and water. They also like cucumber and they arrive at certain times to several food stations to enjoy this free daily lunch. The Labuk Staff also won the PM’s trust by curing their wounds, after dominant leadership fights.
 

On the left feeding station in front of the balcony at Labuk Bay, this time there is a big group of 10 bachelors, also called the Boys’ Club. The dominant biggest nose on the left declared war with the harem leader and hurt him probably lethally.
Earlier today the staff heard loud war sounds. The leader of a beautiful 12 ladies’ harem was attacked by the leader of a band of bachelors. This male called Sidane wanted to take over his kingdom and started a bloody fight this morning. He already challenged and hurt the harem lover leader badly, probably fatally. The main problem for a PM is that their wounds don’t heal. They cannot lick their wounds clean. They get infections and die because of that. At Labuk Bay the other day, they found a PM dying and treated his open wounds with insect repellents. This one survived and they gained respect from the group. But today we saw and photographed this new victim of a big fight. Hopefully, he will survive, the more so because there are not many Proboscis left.
The tourists can watch this luncheon meeting from about a 10 to 20 meters’ distance from a first floor deck. There are plans to build two separate viewing points now, one for Europeans and one for the noisy Asians.
 

Also some common macaques and silver leave monkeys appreciate the extra attention and climb down from high trees to eat some long beans thrown on the grass field. We saw one grey silver leave monkey with a cute little brown baby and also a brown albino silver leave monkey. After two hours most tourists had left and to our great surprise we saw one of the younger Proboscis suddenly come right up to us on the first floor.
 

Danny another employee of Labuk was busy doing his homework counting the eating Proboscis.
He told us Adi is a juvenile PM, three years old. Its nose still small but with males it will grow really big. Sometimes it played sometimes with another remarkable visitor: a noisy squeaking otter.
 

There was time enough for me to take some really nice PM close ups. One of the photos looks as if they are shot in our Studio.
Is this what we like to see? A PM posing inside? No! But this was a one-off opportunity I simply could not resist and it shows the absolute beauty of this animal. Let’s hope that others will also get this PM craze and help to save their habitat and the rain forest on Borneo!
THE JAN PROBOSCIS MONKEY BLOG
is written now ‘LIVE’ in Borneo Malaysia
by Jan van der Meer
founder http://www.global-dvc.org/ and
Photographer and DVD-producer
of the Proboscis Monkey in Borneo
other info on Proboscis Monkey in Dutch and more
photographs and first edited videoclips at:
http://www.orang-belanda.hyves.nl/