Civets, Insects and Babies Galore!

Things are beginning to settle down here after the excitement of Loris Pride Days.  This week it's back to business as usual and that means nightly treks up the mountain to observe our lorises and collect insect abundance data.  We're also lucky enough to have Peter Roberts for another week so we gained some special insights into the local civet population as well (mostly through poo samples!).  Of course, business as usual doesn't mean that life here is any less interesting or exciting.   :)

Spot the civet track.  Photo Peter Roberts.

Peter was able to collect five samples of civet scat (poo) during his time in Cipaganti.  Though this was far fewer than he had hoped to gather, we were still able to learn some interesting things about the diets of our civets.  Our scat samples included seeds from persimmon and coffee beans, body parts from grasshoppers and millipedes, and bones and feather bits from small birds.  There was also a fair amount of civet hair found within the scat that can be attributed to grooming.  Peter was also able to visually confirm at least one civet in our loris territories.  Visual confirmation is difficult because civets are also nocturnal animals but tend to jump quickly from tree to tree.  This means that observations of their behaviour can be quite difficult!  For this reason we have set camera traps to capture our crafty little civets on film.  Photos have already shown a civet with a white tip on his tail.  Individual coat variation or sign of a new subspecies in our area?  Hopefully we'll be setting out more camera traps soon to know for sure!  

Head tracker Pak Dendi setting up a camera trap.  Photo Peter Roberts.

Persimmon (top) and coffee beans found in civet scat.  Photos Peter Roberts.

Our volunteer Mark was working on his biweekly insect data collection this week.  Every two weeks he devotes three days to catching insects and puzzling together what orders the insect community of Cipaganti are made up of.  A very interesting micro-cosmos to look into, the only downside being that the mosquitoes (order Diptera, see it is not that complicated!) seem to be everywhere on your body and surrounding environment, except inside the traps. 

Mark setting our insect trap.  Photo Iing Animallica.

Even something as basic as insect collection can present difficulties because our insects use stealth and deception to keep out of the traps, and walking tea leaves or branches are not an uncommon sight!  So if you want to catch one of these trained commandos, you better be a patient and stealthy observer yourself.  A common insect in our area, and a favorite of Mark’s, is known as the Mantodea or mantis. Mantises are superb predatory beings – even amongst their own kind!  It is not uncommon to find a decapitated mantis body; the most likely scenario being that a female decapitated the male after mating.  It goes to show once again that serious male to female miscommunication is not just restricted to human beings.  ;)  

Mark displaying his favorite insect.  Photo Iing Animallica.

Curious baby Lucu!  Photo Peter Roberts.

This week was especially exciting for loris observations because we saw not one, not two, but SIX slow loris babies! Some, like Ena’s baby, came as close as seven feet to our faces! Peter was able to capture some really great shots of Ena’s baby as it boldly walked on a fallen bamboo trunk right in front of us. We saw these babies grooming high up in bamboo and jiengien (gum) trees, as well as foraging for some insects and nectar. We could tell these particular Javan slow lorises were babies by their fluffier white and black appearance and lack of radio collars. These primates are only given collars after about year, or whenever they mature into adult age, for safety purposes in their growing months. 

Our baby Lucu checking out the researchers.  Photo Peter Roberts.

A particularly interesting moment was when we saw Charlie and her baby, Lucu (which was the winning name of our previous baby loris naming contest and translates into “cute” in Indonesian), foraging for food together despite very windy conditions. These two could be seen grooming each other and cuddling together for heat and comfort high up in the trees.  Absolutely adorable? We think so!