Home -South and Southeast Asia
Habitat – Forest Canopy
Niche – Nonmigratory Omnivore
Favorite Food – Figs
Wingspan – 5 feet
Weight – 6 pounds
Status – Lower Risk
Threats – Deforestation
In the murkey morning gloom over the forests of Vietnam, something that sounds like a fell beast flaps overhead with massive 5 foot wings. As its alights in some distant tree, a great blast like a trumpet issues from the fog. Something lives in the Asian forests that dwarfs nearly all others that share the trees. A bird bigger than an eagle with a massive weapon of a beak, the Great Indian Hornbill is among the most spectacular birds on earth.
The best feature in the mirror for hornbills is the massive bill, clearly. The size of a rhinoceros horn and crested with a knobby lump called a casque, the bill is used for two things: snatching and breaking. Although this massive bird of flight feeds predominantly on fruit (especially figs), it will snatch up whatever small animal it can with a flick of the beak. Once secured, little is likely to escape. If it’s a lizard, the great indian hornbill will simply flick its head back and swallow it whole it one gulp. Anything larger and it employs a more violent tactic, battering the trapped body into nearby tree branches. Harmless to man, the hornbill is nonetheless a formidable presence in the Southeast Asian forests where bears and tigers roam.
Great Indian Hornbills don’t often fly. Instead, they hop sideways from branch to branch in the dense canopy of the Asian rain forest. However, they can fly, and when they do, it’s quite a spectacle. Their giant “whooshing” wingbeats can be heard by people over a half mile away. It appears that mythology of giant, imposing birds isn’t far out from reality. Yet far from fearsome, the great indian hornbill instead performs a crucial service to the rainforest. As it snatches up fig fruit and any number of seeds during a hard day’s feeding, it will spread those seeds to a new area every time it has to take a dump. As the fertilized seeds germinate and compete for light, they’re able to carry on the next generation of trees outside of the dark shadow of the tallest trunks. In reforestation efforts, the great indian hornbills are valuable stewards.
Great Indian hornbills mate for life, and family life is a fascinating affair. After mating, the pair will secure a nest in the hollow trunk of a tree. Then, as the female sits inside and the male remains out in the forest, both birds begin to construct a wall of mud, twigs, and leaves between themselves. The female is entirely walled inside the tree for several months save a small hole in the mud barrier. The hole is used for two things: to allow the male to pass food into the female, and secondly, to allow her the opportunity to take care of…”business.” I wouldn’t want to be an animal roaming along that particular treetrunk when a female great indian hornbill defacates at high velocity out the interior.
After three months with the single chick, the mother will break out of the nest with her strong bill to get a proper meal herself. Junior will then repair the damaged barrier, walling himself inside the tree for another full month while mom and dad attend to him from the outside. When that month is up, he’s free to experience the world in all its danger and wonder.
Great indian hornbills cannot survive without the trees. They need them for the food they produce. They need hollow trunks to build their nests. They need the trees to hide from predators and to stalk prey. They need them to rest and to roost. There are not many forests left in Asia.
Home – Sub Saharan Africa, West and South Asia
Habitat – varied, including grasslands, deserts, and tropical forests
Niche – opportunistic predator
Favorite Food – honeybee larvae
Length – up to 3.5 feet nose to tail tip
Weight – up to 30 pounds
Status – Lower Risk
When people think of ferocious animals, they think of the big ones – sharks, lions, tigers, bears. But as it turns out, there are few animals on earth that are stouter of heart than a certain mammal no bigger than a terrier. Cross a honey badger and you cross what Guinness named the most fearless mammal on earth.
The honey badger is native to sub-Saharran Africa and South Asia, living in a variety of habitats in its wide range. From dry savanna to dense forest, it trots over great distances in constant search of food to fuel its impressive metabolism. Seeking safe haven in underground burrows or inside rock crevices, the honey badger is an active hunter in the daylight hours. Most badgers are nocturnal and have poor eyesight, relying instead on a highly developed sense of smell to find food. But the honey badger is built for hunting anything it can get its mouth around during the light of day. Everything from worms and termites up to formidable animals like porcupines and snakes are potential sources of food for this miraculous member of the weasel family.
Being active in the daytime is not the only trait that sets the honey badger apart from other badgers. Indeed, it is only distantly related to what are called “true badgers” – a family that includes the familiar American and Eurasian badgers. The honey badger possesses the long digging claws of its cousins, but its teeth are not as adapted for crushing. It has fewer teeth, but those it has are adapted to biting and holding on tight. It also sports a defense that’s more commonly developed in skunks than badgers. If an enemy gets too close, the honey badger will unleash a chemical assault from its backside. Specialized anal glands secret a nauseating liquid that can drive off even the most fearsome foe.
As the name implies, the honey badger is fond of the sweet stuff of honeybees. And remarkably, through the wonders of evolution, it has devised a rather ingenious way of obtaining it. A certain type of bird in Africa, the black-throated honeyguide is its partner in crime. The honeyguide is able to locate bees’ nests by virtue of its flight, but it has no means of plundering the nest by itself. The bird is too small to brave a swarm of bees and tear open a nest to obtain the honey it wants. Instead, it relies on some hired muscle. After it has located a nest, the next step is for the bird to find a nearby honey badger. Communicating through its flight and calls, the bird will then lead the badger to the nest. Undeterred by the stings on its thick hide, the honey badger will rip the nest to pieces with its strong claws, allowing both badger and bird to feast on the sweet reward of honey and bee larvae.
Aside from its interesting relationship with birds, the honey badger is known for its fearless disposition. Its skin is thick and tough, and hangs loosely from its body, reducing damage to vital organs if it is bitten in a fight. But defense is only part of its reputation. The honey badger can dish out punishment with the best of them. If its noxious chemical musk isn’t enough to drive away an assailant, it can bite with great force and will not let go until its adversary loses consciousness or shakes the badger off. The honey badger proves that bravery in the animal kingdom can come in small packages.
Home – Western Africa
Habitat – tropical forest floor
Niche – large omnivore
Favorite Food – fruit
Length – up to 3 feet
Weight – up to 80 pounds
Status – Vulnerable to Extinction
Threats – hunting, habitat destruction
The rainforests of Central Africa have long been known as dark, forbidding places. Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” was set in this otherworldly realm of dense vegetation and hidden dangers. A cryptid named Mokele-Mbembe reputedly lurks in the swamps of the Congo Basin, a lost relic from a distant time in the past. It is a land that is both massive and claustrophobic, a mix of enormous trees with thick underbrush. Many animals blend in among the foliage, but there is one animal that wants to be seent, making its statement with bright, striking coloration under the trees.
Few animals of the Africa boast such unmistakable features as the mandrill. Sky-blue cheeks taper into its bright red nose sitting over a golden beard. The gaudy coloration of the males is their asset in the mating season, where they attempt to outlook and outdo other males in the quest for females, who are 1/3 the size. Pound for pound, male mandrills are the largest monkeys in the world. Unlike monkeys that dwell exclusively in trees, the mandrill’s legs are of equal length, perfectly adapted for running on all fours on the ground like baboons. However, a troop of mandrills will seek safety in the trees when night falls. This adaptation is especially important in a land where formidable predators hunt at night.
Mandrills are omnivorous and spend most of the day foraging on the forest floor for fruit, seeds, insects, fungi, roots, and the occasional small animal. They live in groups called “troops” of about 20 individuals, with some large troops reaching as many as 250. Like baboons, Mandrill society is based around a hierarchy with the dominant male at the top. This male earns the right to mate with the females of the group until another male challenges his dominance. The size difference between male and female mandrills is partly explained through this hierarchy. Generally, males of mammal species that mate with many different females show a much greater size difference than those of species that pair for life.
Socializing helps bind mandrill troops together, and grooming is the most important social activity. Members of the troop will take turns picking insects and parastites from the backs of others when they are resting. Also, members will communicate with each other through grunts. These vocalizations help the group to be alerted of dangers and signal when to move on to a new area of forest. The troops move over great distances and will readily defend their territory against unwelcome outsiders. Males attempt to frighten enemies by “yawning” wide, brandishing their two and a half inch long incisors. If the sight of this alone is not enough to deter a foe, the mandrill will rush forward, barking and grunting loudly to scare it off.
Mandrills are rapidly disappearing in the forests of Cameroon and Gabon they have called home for thousands of years. Increased logging and poaching of these animals has cut their numbers significantly. Once common across the rainforests, mandrills are now vulnerable to extinction.
Home - Amazon River Basin
Habitat – tropical forest, at the base of trees
Niche – predatory insect
Favorite Food – other insects
Length – one inch
Notable Feature – their stings are described as the most painful on earth
Imagine pain 30 times worse than a bee sting. It is a pain described as walking across a bed of hot coals with a rusted nail inches deep in your sole. It’s fearsome, intense, blackout-inducing pain that can nag a victim for a day or longer as the venom courses through muscles. In fact, this particular insect’s sting is so powerful that it has been compared to being shot with a bullet.
The South American bullet ants are among the largest ants in the world, reaching nearly an inch in length. They inhabit tropical rainforests of Central and South America, ranging from Nicaragua down into the Amazon River Basin, where they like to roam about the trunks of trees in search of food. And as their name implies, they have a fearsome reputation.
Unlike their more social ant cousins, bullet ants are loners in the forests they inhabit, even though they live together in a nest. They are hostile to other bullet ants that they don’t recognize from their nest and will fight to the death. On the other hand, contact with members of the same nest will cause a temporary suspension of the loner lifestyle. If they happen to run into a familiar ant, they will communicate and sometimes pass food back and forth, but that is the extent of their social behavior. For the most part, bullet ants are looking out for number one. Instead of leaving a scent trail to tell other ants about a source of food, these solitary insects will exploit the meal themselves. In addition to feeding on insects, they also have a fondness for nectar and are often seen carrying a droplet of the sweet liquid in their mandibles.
Bullet ants are known and feared for their terrifying stings. Their sting is primarily for defense since most of the insects that the bullet ant eats are already dead. It’s classified as the most painful sting of any insect, beating out even that of the intimidating tarantula hawk wasp. The secret to the pain is in the cocktail of neurotoxins contained in the ant’s venom. The stinger pierces skin and a bulb at its base injects the venom into the wound, causing the cycle of pain as the toxins enter the bloodstream.
Though it seems insane to actively seek the stings of bullet ants, some South American tribes actually use the stings as tests of manhood. The Satere-Mawe people of Brazil are one such tribe. In preparation for the ceremony, bullet ants are collected from the forest and subdued, then woven into large mitts made of leaves. The young men undergoing the right of passage must then place these mitts on their hands and allow the ants to awaken from their stupor. As the enraged ants feverishly try to escape, they sting the hands mercilessly. The custom varies from tribe to tribe, but often boys who are seeking manhood must endure this ordeal without screaming – a tall order for someone under the sensation of being burned alive. And some tribes require that a man pass through this rite not once, but up to 20 times.
Home – Southeast Asia
Habitat – tropical forest
Niche – large omnivore (primarily herbivore)
Favorite Food – leaves
Height – up to 5 feet tall
Weight – up to 33 pounds
Status – Vulnerable to Extinction
Threats – habitat loss, poaching
It’s morning in the jungles of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia. Among the thousands of animal calls fighting for ear space in the dense forests, one stands out among the rest. Indeed, this animal’s deafening call would drown out even the roar of the African lion if put to the test. Able to be heard for over two miles through dense rainforest, the call of the siamang is the loudest of any land mammal on earth.
The siamang is a member of the gibbon family, a group of small, tree-dwelling apes that are known for their spectacular leaps and unrivaled agility among the dense upper canopy of the Asian rainforests. Swinging through the trees with a 5-foot arm span, the stocky, broad-chested siamang is the largest gibbon. These shaggy black apes live in the rainforests of Malaysia, Thailand, and Sumatra, sharing their range with a number of other gibbon species in the treetops.
The most striking feature of the siamang is the expandable flap of stretchy skin on its throat. The skin can be inflated the size of the animal’s entire head and acts as a resonator chamber, amplifying the piercing calls of the ape to ward off intruders and attract mates. The noisesome calls are primarily used to frighten other siamangs that have stumbled into a family’s territory, which can range up to 115 acres.
Like other gibbons and great apes, siamangs are social animals, forming small groups of around 5 animals. These family units are very cohesive, and a family member will rarely venture farther than 100 feet from its kin. As with other apes, grooming is the most important social bonding activity with siamangs. However, social interaction between the family unit is kept to a minimum, leaving most of the day open for eating and resting. Leaves are the siamang’s primary food, forming over half its diet. Fruit and insects form the other half, with some regional variation. Half of the siamang’s waking period from dawn until dusk is spent reasting in the trees, taking short siestas in between foragings.
Siamangs are monogamous, meaning they only mate with one partner during the 2-3 year mating cycle, and the mating pair remains together for life. As is the case with other monogamous mammals, there is very little difference between the sexes in terms of body size. Siamangs show an unusual amount of paternal care for a mammal, and the fathers take over care of the infant after about a year. Indeed, the adult male siamang is responsible for a juvenile’s increasing independence on its journey towards adulthood.
After about eight years of family care, the sexually mature siamang is eased out of its family unit and must strike out on its own. Males then begin a period of wandering in search of females and will call out into the forest to find a mate necessary to build a new family. In fact, the loud “singing” of siamangs is an important part of forging and maintaining the crucial pair bonds.
As the forests fall in the Malay Peninsula, so do the siamangs. As illegal logging, clearcutting, and palm oil plantations increase, the future of these magnificent apes grows increasingly in doubt. Without the trees to support them, the siamang’s call will go silent.
