A bad smell throughout history
“MANY, many times the Mydaus has discovered its proximity to us by its extremely disagreeable and peculiar odour. So powerful indeed is this that natives, attempting to catch these animals, often fall down insensible if struck by the discharge from their anal battery. Even at the distance of half a mile and more the stink, as I must call it, permeates the atmosphere so thickly as I must call it, that it is plainly discernible by taste,” Forbes, 1872.
“Another local expert jungle trekker and hunter, Paul Hnrnp, said he never smelled anything like the stench. He also said one could smell the stench from 10 metres away…” The Borneo Post, Nov 15, 2012.
The recent report of an attacking animal killed by a worker in an oil palm estate in Kampung Baing brought attention to one of the least known and sighted critters of the rainforest – the badger.
Identified by Forest Department research officer Ahmad Apeng as the Stink Badger [Mydaus (from the Greek meaning stinking) javanensis] because of its smell, this animal is rarely seen because it only wanders at night.
In scientific literature, there have been only eight sightings of the animal in Sarawak. An account in 2010 at Kuala Lawas stated one was stuck between a refrigerator and the kitchen wall. Rescue efforts failed when the critter sprayed a milky green liquid. The team from Sarawak Forestry had to retreat because the odour resulted in severe vomiting. The Stink Badger managed to free itself and wandered off. Cleansing the area with strong detergents did not remove the smell. Finally, a very strong bleach was employed and, even then, the smell lingered a year later.
In 1921, three skins were reported in native houses in Mount Murud stretched for sitting on the floor. (I feel this record must be suspect because I doubt anyone would purposely capture and skin one.)
Since the 1920s, there have been scattered field sightings and road kills. Recent camera traps designed to observe other species have not yielded any images and none have shown up on small mammal surveys in Sarawak. The Stink Badger has not been, understandably, studied by scientists to any extent.
For many years, the Stink Badger was placed with the other badgers but has been moved to the skunk family after DNA testing. There are only two Asiatic members; our stinky friend and the more studied, accessible and ‘not as stinky’ Palawan. One of the Java subspecies is named Lucifer after a possible nasty encounter with a researcher.
The life history can only be surmised. It is thought that this skunk relative lives in a burrow with a straight tunnel that leads to a small chamber. There could possibly be around two to four offspring based on the number of teats. Nutrition could be grubs and worms.
A real badger, the Bornean Ferret Badger (Melogale everetti), has also been in the science news recently. It was reported to have been sighted in the Kinabatangan Flood Plain in Sabah. The badger had previously been thought to only occupy an ecological niche of 1,070 to 3,000 metres in the Mount Kinabalu area. However, like the Stink Badger-Skunk, there have been very few sightings made known to science.
Remains of the Borneo Badger found in the Niah Caves in deposits that date back to 40,000 years ago suggest a much wider distribution. The sequencing of weather changes since that time indicates the animal moved to the highlands and now could be migrating to lower altitudes. However, many more sightings must be recorded before any trend can be established.
The badger was collected and sent to England by Alfred Everett (the everetti in the scientific name) who was collecting for Charles Brooke at the behest of Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin. Local birders will know his name as he had 10 birds named for him. His personal collection was sold to the Natural History Museum in 1872. The badger was subsequently described by Oldfield Thomas and made known to the western scientific community in 1895.
In a fascinating aside, Alfred Everett was part of an expedition searching for a missing link to modern man. While surveying the Niah Caves, he collected and sent back to the museum the jawbone of an orangutan. This bone could very probably have become part of the infamous Piltdown Man, who was assembled 15 years after Everett’s death. The scientific hoax combined the jaw of an orangutan with the skull of a modern human to show modern man could have evolved in Britain and not far flung places like Asia or Africa. The fraud would not be exposed until 1953, 40 years later.