Have You Seen These Strange Animals?

The Misunderstood Treeshrews - Strange Animals Of The Rainforest

By Rick Gregory

Treeshrews are not only misnamed strange animals; they are total misfits of evolutionary placement. Treeshrews are not really shrews, nor do most dwell in trees.

They were first grouped with true shrews early on, and then contentiously placed together with primate species. A flurry of anatomical studies finally concluded that treeshrews are so different that they belong with themselves, not any other species.

On Mount Jerai in Kedah, two misunderstood species confront each other. They are both mammals. One is squirrel-sized with a bushy tail and brown, dense fur, and a conical muzzle known as a treeshrew. The other is human.

Mark Darmaraj was a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in wildlife management from Universiti Sains Malaysia. He studied treeshrews in the hill dipterocarp and montane forests of Mount Jerai. Radio collars fitted to ten individuals allows him to track their daytime and night time habits.

Wildlife researchers are not societal misfits; they just prefer the rainforest over the city. Other people think they’re crazy and strange animals themselves. How could anyone spend month after month chasing monkeys, bats or even butterflies? But like some of their wild subjects, these researchers tend to be very unique individuals.

“I trapped rats, squirrels and treeshrews, but the treeshrews caught my interest. These strange animals would go nuts when released, banging around and running headfirst into trees,” recalled Mark. “I never really saw them up in the trees, so I decided to follow them.”

Curiosity is a signature characteristic of a wildlife researcher. For Mark, field trips taken during his early days at university sparked his interest in the wild world.

On one occasion he decided to go alone into the jungle at night. Afraid at first, he then spotted a slow loris 20 metres away in his torchlight. Walking up to the tree, he stopped and made eye contact with the large-eyed rainforest mammal perched just 4 metres above.

For five minutes they eyed each other without aggression. Arriving back at camp at midnight he was hooked.

The local name for a treeshrew is tupai, which means squirrel. Malaysia boasts eight species out of about 19 species worldwide, so it’s a very important region for these unique and strange animals.

Treeshrews have their own branch - Order Scandentia – on the Mammalian tree out of only 26 to classify all mammals. They are also considered very primitive and may be a link to the earliest primate ancestors. Their current existence could provide vital clues about the twists and turns on the roadmap of evolution.

Mount Jerai is an isolated mountain, composed of sandstone and quartzite, rising to 1220 metres. It is also a biological island. Below 300 metres fruit plantations and padi fields dominate the landscape, above the habitats are undisturbed.

For his study, Mark set up two research plots – one at 500 metres in hill dipterocarp forests and the other at 940 metres in the montane zone. In each plot, 100 rectangular wire traps, baited with bananas and palm oil seeds, were laid out 10 metres apart to capture small mammals. Over 40% of the captures were of one treeshrew species - Tupaia glis.

In the jungle, Mark used radio telemetry to pinpoint treeshrew locations on the grid. Not wanting to flush the animals out, he patiently tracked them at night so he could search for them the next day.

Each tree crevice or bush pile is measured and observed to gain insights into treeshrew preferences. Among mammals, treeshrews are not the best of parents. Young are birthed in remote nests and remain separate from their natural mothers, who only feed them for a few minutes every other day.

People like Mark Devaraj are rare. They follow a call to conservation even when the prospects are not favourable. “Not many people go after what they want to do,” he laments, “because the system doesn’t give them options, so they go looking for a job.”

After finishing up with treeshrews, Mark went on to pursue other tropical rainforest species, not all strange animals, with WWF Malaysia to play a part towards conserving Malaysia’s magnificent biodiversity “that is going to be lost much sooner than people realize.”

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