From Borneo to Madagascar
WHAT do Borneo and Madagascar have in common despite being 7,000km apart? Borneo is the world’s third largest island after Greenland and New Guinea, while Madagascar is the fourth.
Both were created by tectonic plate movements but Madagascar is the older of the two, having been created 90 million years ago with Borneo about half its age. Both islands have had granitic intrusions into the base of their mountains and through erosion the granite is now exposed on the surface as at Mount Kinabalu.
Tropical rainforests once covered both islands but mankind’s ever-increasing intrusion has resulted in deforestation and the development of heathlands (kerangas) on deforested areas. Oil palm plantations and logging of hardwood have led to rainforest loss in Borneo, while in Madagascar there is eucalyptus tree monoculture to turn wood into charcoal for barbecue fires worldwide.
Without doubt, there are not unalike species of mammals, which have evolved on each island throughout time in separation from mainland Africa and Asia, with each animal and insect species adapting to its own ecological niche. Today both islands recognise that their greatest resource is the rainforest in which to protect and maintain their very rich wildlife.
Each island has been subjected to past colonisation, in Madagascar’s case from French and English influences, whilst Borneo has experienced English and Dutch influences. In the last two decades of the 20th century, the tourist trade benefited the inhabitants of their offshore islands with the development of resorts for diving, snorkelling, trekking, and sightseeing, and in promoting local handicraft products — all adding income to local economies.
Greatest link
Anthropologists and ethnologists both agree that the original colonists of Madagascar actually came from Borneo from between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago. They crossed the Indian Ocean at a time of climate change, when the Indian Ocean’s currents suddenly reversed from west to east, to east to west, thus allowing greater ease of access to intrepid explorers.
Many of these subsequent colonists were Bornean Chinese, hence the explanation of lowland padi fields and highland rice terraces that are still worked today to give the Malagasy their
staple food. Fascination for these mega islands
In 2001, I visited Madagascar, following my first foray to Borneo in the early 1990s. When I landed on a beach in northern Madagascar, I realised that some of what I was seeing there was reminiscent of many forms of wildlife in the sea and on land that I had already experienced in Borneo. It was deja vu.
How could such diverse species of wildlife have evolved in two such isolated islands offshore from the mainland coasts of Africa and Asia? On Madagascar, the animal that most fascinated me was the lemur.
Lemurs
Lemur in Latin means ghostlike. This is a good description of this mammal whose appearance has a spectre-like suggestion on its face with shades of the departed. I saw one species of such a mammal for only one moment but then, with a blink of my eye, it had vanished into its rainforest habitat.
Lemurs are descendants of primates and related to Australian bush babies and the Malaysian slow lorises, distinctive with moist noses. Their only predators, apart from man for bush meat, are possums.
There are 105 species of lemur in Madagascar, which is equal to the total number of monkey species in mainland Africa and Asia combined. Most lemurs are vegetarians, with special digestive capabilities to devour alkaloids in plant leaves, some of which are poisonous to other mammals. They are selective leaf eaters, choosing those plants that most take their fancy.
A ground-living species of lemur once lived, as found in archaeological digs. The Megaladapis edwardsi or giant carnivorous lemur, weighed about 80kg and is now extinct. Today most species are arboreal in habitat with many seen leaping from branch to branch in squirrellike fashion or swinging like apes.
One of today’s largest lemurs is the Indri indri lemur weighing up to 9kg. Unlike other lemurs, this species has a rudimentary tail and thus travels vertically along tree trunks, not unlike the koala bear in Australia. It is a critically-endangered species, with its panda-like black and white fur offering an easy target for poachers.
As with all lemurs, the females live in very small groups and produce one child every two to three years. Interestingly, while her offspring can travel many kilometres in their domain, it is the female who is the dominant pack member and whose voice, in calling her brood home to their nest, can travel through the forest for up to at least 3km.
By comparison, in size, there are 21 species of mouse lemur, each weighing less than 30 grams. The smallest of these is the Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur (Microcebus berthae), which is a relatively recently evolved species. With bulbous eyes and excellent night vision, it is in fact the world’s smallest nocturnal primate and, like Borneo’s slow loris, may only be seen in torchlight.
The Aye-aye lemur (Daubentonia madagascariensis), the world’s largest omnivorous nocturnal primate at over a metre long, is the only lemur species to possess very sharp rodent-like teeth with long middle finger hooks. With sharp hearing, it can detect larvae burrowing under the tree bark and then its teeth do their work in gnawing the bark away and the hooked finger then digs out the larvae for digestion. This species of lemur with silver colourings was once seen locally as a bad omen but today is a protected species.
Nosy Komba
This small island, to the northwest of the northern tip of Madagascar, surrounded by offshore volcanic rocks which serve as natural breakwaters, is often described as the island of lemurs. In a visit there, I landed on a sandy beach with wooden pirogues (canoes with Polynesianlike outriggers) further up the beach with local fishermen mending their nets. These canoes, made of mango wood, had been skilfully hollowed out by the islanders.
This island reminded me of small Bornean islands I had visited before with no cars, no electricity and where the islanders make a living out of fishing and in welcoming visitors. I was at the village of Ampangorina, where the womenfolk painted their faces with white dot patterns in a similar way that wooden handicrafts are decorated in Indonesian Borneo. One of the village’s specialities is the production of beautifully handembroidered white cotton tablecloths.
The village highlight for me was seeing ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur macaco) running along thatched rooftops and tree branches. The males had black fur and the females had red furry heads. These lemurs were used to a human presence. One jumped down onto my shoulders and inquisitively poked its head around my neck to view my face. Clearly that was enough for him for he leapt up onto the nearest tree branch. Unlike many other species of wild animal, these ring-tailed lemurs had adapted to human habitation.
The outcrops of granite rock there were not dissimilar to those at Mount Kinabalu. The lemurs on Nosy Komba were gentle compared with the aggressive behaviour of their distant primate relatives in the macaque ape world of Borneo. Sadly the uncontrolled and rapid deforestation of Madagascar is estimated to lead to a depletion of 90 per cent of lemur species by 2040. A frightening thought. Will we ever learn?