Animal Predators And Prey In The Rainforest
Animal Predators Or Prey: Who’s the Real Jungle Bait?By Jeet Sukumaran In the movie Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, with biceps bulging and face smeared with dark camouflage cream, leads a team of elite commandos to take on the jungle’s newest and meanest fighting machine. Armed with an array of weaponry that could pulverize a herd of elephants, Arnold’s platoon fears nothing that the tropical rainforest can offer. Oh, what a mistaken belief by the thick-muscled and thick-headed action hero! Before his troops even get a sighting on their jungle target, the squad starts to dwindle in horrific displays of carnage as their bravado shrinks. The attacker is an alien. A machine-man perfectly constructed to hurdle small trees and leap through the forest, thrust metal daggers through soft body parts, and unleash a nasty set of foreign-made weapons on unsuspecting humans. This badass brother from another planet even performs in-the-field surgery on his inflicted wounds that ooze out a green, gooey fluid. So for the next hour and a half, these two alpha males go after each other with a vengeance, each using the cunning and talents of their own species to foil the adversary. What on earth is the lesson learned from all this mayhem and slaughter? I’ll tell you. It all comes down to animal predators versus animal prey. You gotta know who can kick or eat your ass! That’s the law of the jungle. So take a hint from Arnold and realize that when you go into jungle habitat, animal predators or prey species, it all depends on the type of jungle animals lurking about. Once a group of friends was hiking in a rainforest off the East-West Highway in northern Peninsular Malaysia. A little way down the trail, they came across some pugmarks in the dirt and stopped for a closer look.
Tiger! Without wasting another breathe, they quickly retreated and vacated the area. Such is the fear that these beautiful carnivorous (meat-eating) cats can instil in most of us. But this dread of tigers, bears or leopards, is somewhat misplaced. In fact, there are a few other wild creatures with less menacing attributes that should provoke as much caution. The reason is simple. Almost none of the large carnivore species see us as prey. Thus, their immediate reaction to detecting our presence is usually flight, or, at the very least, discretion. Since they usually avoid us long before we even notice where they are, contact with them is minimal, and they are rarely put in a situation where they feel threatened by us. On the contrary, many of the larger herbivores (plant-eaters) get agitated very easily, usually just by our being around, and, instead of flight, react to the perceived threat with extreme aggression. The number one man-killer in Africa is not the lion or the leopard or the cheetah, but the lumbering hippopotamus, a vegetarian. Anyone who inadvertently wanders into their territory is usually dealt a brutal blow by their huge size and massive jaws. Think World Wrestling Federation and Smack Down, nature style. A few other non-carnivores that rank just below the hippopotamus in the danger zone are elephants, cape buffaloes, and rhinos. In Malaysia we do not have hippos, except at Zoo Negara, so just make sure to stand on the right side of the fence to avoid being chomped to death. But the tropical jungles are home to those bulky Asian elephants, the powerful gaur (wild cattle), and the scrappy wild boar, a particular nasty nuisance that causes untold injuries to wildlife hunters. Despite the heavy press about man-eating cats, it would be wise to concentrate on some of these alternative threats before worrying too much about a tiger attack. If you do venture into the jungle, first just remember to use your common sense. In one national park in India, the wildlife that most people fear is not tigers, but elephants. Tigers tend to avoid people. While hiking in the park we had the weird experience of being surrounded by a herd of chital deer. Why? Because deer know what they are, they are prey for tigers. But somehow the deer felt reasonably safe around humans, knowing that tigers rarely approach these beasts and that humans were less of a threat, at least without shotguns attached. Now if a herd of glossy-eyed deer can figure out who to avoid and who to hang out with in the forest, let’s hope that you – the one with the bigger brain - can figure it out too. Here’s a hint: Keep away from the rainforest animals that can crush you. Every few months in the park in India someone was killed or seriously injured by an elephant. As one of the rangers put it, "When an Asian elephant attacks, what can you do? You cannot fight it. You cannot run - elephants, reaching speeds of up to 60 miles per hour, can easily chase you down. You can try to climb a tree, but good luck getting high enough before the elephant gets to you, or finding a tree strong enough to withstand the elephant's fury. All you can probably do is die".  In many cases the victims - usually poachers looking for honey - inadvertently blunder into a herd, provoking a defensive reaction from the protective adults. Other cases involve rogue elephants, usually bulls in musk, in which case the elephant is the aggressor.
Don’t be fooled by what you see on National Geographic specials and expect to trip over endangered animals on every other step. In the Malaysian rainforests, unlike the African savannahs, jungle animals are virtually invisible. Almost all animal predators - carnivores and herbivores alike - take great pains to avoid you, which is easy given our dulled senses and noisy bumbling about in the dense vegetation. Don’t be fooled by what you don’t see either. The result is that, to the uninitiated, it is very easy to come to the conclusion that the rainforest is deserted, void of most wildlife except for a few vocal birds and primates and the chatter of millions of insects. If you do happen to become jungle bait for hungry animal predators, don’t expect to get a warning call. It’s only in the movies that tigers or lions leap out of the bushes and pounce upon their victims with a fearsome battle cry. Rarely, if at all, do these intelligent animal predators act so dumb as to give away the element of surprise. Vocalization is a form of communication, and animal predators feel very little need to communicate with what they want to devour. A straightforward attack for dinner is almost always carried out in silence. This is a bit bothersome for researchers who spend long days alone in the jungle. Here’s what one local amphibian specialist worries about while collecting frogs and turtles in Malaysia and Thailand: Most of your encounters with mammals will be with the ones in the rainforest trees, where they feel safe in their high perches.
The big animals are seemingly non-existent. But the results of camera-trapping studies, where metal boxes with infrared triggers are wired to trees to capture photos of wildlife passing by, tells a different story. A trail that you may have walked on many times, and seen little, if anything, will reveal itself to be a veritable highway. Sun bears, Malayan tigers, elephant species, wild boars, tapirs, monitor lizards, porcupines, civets, deer, gaur - the entire gamut of rainforest wildlife tramps through and parades in front of the camera when humans are absent. Nothing is absolute in nature. Large carnivore predators are not all dangerous human-killers awaiting a chance to lunge at you on the rainforest trail, as portrayed in popular media, nor are the large herbivores the sweet-tempered beasts that they are often made out to be. The real chances of encountering large animal predators - carnivore or herbivore - in the parks and reserves of Malaysia’s protected areas are very slim. So, do not let the misguided fear of tigers keep you away from the rainforest, or make you nervous when you do decide to venture in. All animals in the rainforest demand respect and caution. Just ask Arnold, that’s why they had to make Predator 2. Search Us Now ... For More Jungle AnimalsGo to Jungle Essays From Animal Predators to Home
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