EXPEDITIONS: Sumatra / Richard Freeman -- update

Graham reports that Richard's now safely back in Exeter, having returned from Sumatra.  He phoned in yesterday evening and sounded pleased with how things went.

As reported a few days ago the team

• Found footprints of at least three different individuals
• Heard orang pendek calling in the jungle
• Got new and important witness testimony
• Collected "lots" of hair samples

More updates and reports to follow.

OLL LEWIS: The Sumatran Tiger

Whilst there is still no news from Sumatra, Oll is hard at work looking at the Forteana of that strange island...

Sumatra’s land animals have been genetically isolated since sea levels rose between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago. As a result of this the fauna of the island is quite unique with many distinct and rare subspecies being found on the island. Some species and subspecies like the Sumatran rhinoceros are, although critically endangered and very rare indeed, found on the mainland as well as Sumatra itself, but others are found just on the island, having evolved there after the island became cut off from the mainland. One of those endemic subspecies is the Sumatran tiger, Panthera tigris sumatrae.

The Sumatran tiger is the smallest subspecies of tiger in the world, with males measuring an average of 2.4 metres in length compared to the 3.5-metre-length reported in some Siberian tigers (Panthera tigris altaica). There are a number of reasons why a comparatively small size has proved an evolutionary advantage for the Sumatran tiger; their smaller size makes movement and hunting easier in the dense forests that formed their habitat, for one. Another reason the Sumatran tiger is smaller than that of their Siberian counterparts is that, according to Bergman’s rule, when a species is widely distributed, larger sizes will tend to be present in colder climates and smaller sizes will be seen in warmer climates. This is certainly true of tigers, which show smaller average size and weight the closer one gets to the equator. A smaller size will tend to mean a higher surface area to volume ration facilitating heat loss through the skin, which is useful in warmer climates.

The advantages to being smaller in dense forest outweigh the disadvantages but the small size of the Sumatran tiger also presents problems that they might not have to deal with were they larger like the Siberian tiger. One of these problems is, being smaller they might seem more attractive as prey themselves but due to markings mimicking the look of eyes on the back of their ears, predators approaching the tigers from behind are often fooled into thinking it is facing towards them and larger.

Another adaptation to their habitat exhibited by the Sumatran tiger subspecies is webbing between their toes, which makes them fast swimmers in comparison to most of their prey. This is particularly useful if hunting in or near water as the tigers, with their webbed feet, will easily be able to out-swim most other mammals, especially those with hooves; should their prey enter the water they will be able to catch up with it or get to the bank quicker. Should the prey be of a manageable size they may even kill it while still in the water.

Despite being very well adapted to their environment the numbers of Sumatran tigers are very low and they are a critically endangered species. Estimates of their numbers range from 500 according to a 1998 survey and 300 according to a 2008 survey. If both surveys are accurate this means that the tiger’s population has crashed by almost 50% in only 10 years, giving a very bleak outlook for the continued survival of the species. Even if the species were to recover its numbers almost half of its genetic diversity has been wiped out; that can include resistance to various diseases and amplify the instance of various genetic disorders amongst the surviving population. On the other hand, other species of big cat like cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) show a very low genetic diversity thought to have been caused by similar potentially catastrophic population crashes, but their species have survived to the present day. The Sumatran tiger’s current problems have similar causes to the problems that have also caused the near extinction of the Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis): habitat destruction and poaching. Habitat destruction caused by deforestation (often by the palm oil industry) has meant that there is less food available for the tigers' regular prey and therefore in turn less prey and that there are less places to hunt or raise cubs in safety. Deforestation and human encroachment has also made it easier and more likely for humans to encounter the tigers. This can have advantages, such as when the shy animal was caught on film in the wild for the first time a few years ago, but these pale into insignificance when compared to the disadvantages.

The worst of these is that the creature becomes easier for poachers to catch. Tiger body parts are popular in Chinese medicine and fetch a high price on the black market, often being turned into other products like wine or powders, which idiots who put the rest of their countrymen to shame actually believe increase virility, prolong life or can be cures for syphilis or other STDs. Because they are harder to locate than Sumatran rhinos and have a much larger range tigers are harder to protect in nature reserves and the fact that often the whole body will be taken when a poacher murders a tiger makes it difficult to be sure of the impact of poachers on this shy animal without regular population surveys, so poaching can go unchecked.

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

From CFZ Australia:

Preps for Sumatra 2011 underway

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

Jon has asked me to provide a quick digest of news from the CFZ outposts in Australia and the USA. I will try to do this on a daily basis, but to get started, here are some stories from the last seven days...

From CFZ Australia:

It's out! The CFZ Yearbook 2011 New from CFZ Press

Sumatra's Short Man of the Forest

From Crypto Squad USA:

CFZ: The 2011 Yearbook Has Arrived! (I know, but it doesn't hurt to mention it again)

From Nick Redfern's blog:

Lovers Lanes & Cryptids

RICHARD FREEMAN: GIANT LEECHES: THE SQUIRMING HORROR

One of the inconveniences of our past explorations in the jungles of Sumatra have been leeches. One evening in 2004, whilst on our way to the lost valley, we picked 100 of the little suckers off our legs as we sat around the campfire. I still bear the marks of leech bites from the Sumatran expeditions of 2003-2004 and got some fresh ones this year when I returned.

Jon Hare was particularly repulsed by the creatures and one even found its way into Chris Clark’s mouth! Imagine the horror of a giant leech then. The crawlers in Sumatra were only a couple of inches long but the South American giant leech is 18 inches long!

Haementeria ghilianii inserts a 6 inch proboscis into its mammalian prey in order to drink their blood. This mega leech can live as long as 20 years and was first discovered in 1849. The monster was thought to be extinct since none had been collected since 1893. However, Dr Roy Sawyer discovered a pair in a pond in French Guyana in the mid 1970s, one of these named ‘Grandma Moses’. This individual founded a leech breeding colony at the University of California-Berkeley and produced more than 750 offspring.

More than 46 medical, neurological and natural history research publications were based on data from specimens reared at the breeding colony. Some important discoveries from these offspring include the characterisation and purification of several proteins with an anticoagulant and antimetastatic effect, including hementin, which destroys human fibrin blood clots; charting connection of nerve cells; and functional morphology of salivary and nerve cells. Following its death, ‘Grandma Moses’ was deposited in the collections of the Department of Invertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution.

Film of one of these impressive monsters can be seen here
http://fto.co.za/the-biggest-leech-ever-huge
The related Americobdella valdiviana from Chile can exceed 12 inches in length.

Campsite stories are told of a blood-sucking monster near the town of Sharon in Vermont, USA, deep in the Downer State Forest in an 800 acre woodland camp know as Camp Downer. At Camp Downer there is a canoe pond constructed in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and close to an island in the pond a giant leech is said to lurk; a leech weighing over 300lbs!

A story told to scare children at the camp? Who knows? It might be interesting to investigate though.

GLEN VAUDREY: The riddle of the Sumatran humming bird.

Glen is one of the newer additions to the bloggo family. He wrote to me out of the blue last year to ask wherther we wanted a Western Isles volume in our Mystery Animals of Britain series. We argeed that we did indeed want one, and commissioned him. What we were not expecting was such a bloody good writer and all round nice guy, who - by the way - is writing several other volumes for us...

The hummingbird (family Trochilidae) is famed for many things - not least their ability to fly backwards. Of course, not forgetting their small size; the world’s smallest known bird is the bee hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) which measures in at just 2.24 inches.

What is less well reported is that the range where these magnificent flying marvels can be found? In case you don’t know there range is restricted to the Americas and the Caribbean, which makes the report of a sighting of a Sumatran humming bird all the more remarkable. You see Sumatra is part of Indonesia, and that is on the other side of the Pacific from where you would normally expect to find hummingbirds fluttering about the blooms.

It was in the late 1950’s when Otto and Nina Irrgang reported that they had sighted a new species of hummingbird, one that was only half the size of the bee hummingbird; at 1.5 inches it was a seriously short fellow. Luckily one of their sightings occurred when one bird hovered within a foot of their faces. Given this close encounter it is hardly surprising that the pair managed to get a good description of the mystery bird, describing it as having a stripped yellow back and with a brown underside.

As befitting a true mystery cryptid it is needless to say no known Indonesian bird fits the description neither sharing the colour pattern or the birds small size, for even the smallest bird in the island chain measures 3.5 inches at maturity.

So the question has to be asked is there really a Sumatran humming bird awaiting discovery or could this whole report be based on the sighting of an unidentified insect