Ha-choo! Who’s calling me?
Oh, it’s Mr Pangolin.
What? You want me to write a column too? Sorry, I’m not that famous. The term “Raffles” is probably only known to Stanford Raffles and Rafflesia flower, I suppose?
As merely a leaf monkey, what do I have to write with? Oh, just like you and me, we are endangered animals…
Well, let me try. First, have you heard of “Leaf Monkeys”? We are distant relatives of humans, and we are also related to long-tailed macaques who often visit human residential areas. Compared to the restless macaques, we prefer living our own way peacefully in rural areas. It’s difficult for humans to spot us, as we mainly move around in the deep forest, and shuttle through the canopy. Our stomachs cannot digest human food, so we can only eat leaves and fruits. Why bother going to places where humans live if there is nothing to do?
https://www.singaporegeographic.com/wild-animals/raffles-banded-langurs
Leaf monkeys are divided into several species, and I, Raffles’banded langur (Presbytis femoralis), am a minority species among them. We are named after Sir Stamford Raffles, who found us in 1821 while recording natural history in Singapore. It is said that Singapore regards us as a precious primate, after all, our population within their territory is not more than 70. Here in Malaysia, we have only been found in the southern region, estimated to be less than 300. Apart from these two countries, there have been no traces of us found elsewhere, which is why we are listed as endangered animals.
I don’t really have any feelings and not much of a sense of crisis either. My fellow langurs and I live deep in the mountains. As long as we have fruits and leaves to eat and occasionally scatter seeds to places far from the mother tree, that’s enough for us to spend our happy days.
However, Mr Pangolin’s reminder is not without reason. Deforestation activities have hardly stopped recently, and our activity range is getting smaller and smaller. If we don’t speak out, I will feel guilty if something happens to our descendants one day.
Let me describe our characteristics first! At first glance, you will notice that most of our body parts are covered in black, but if you look closely you will see that our chest, belly and inner thigh, are in white. We have a pair of white eye circles too. (I know Pandas have dark circles around their eyes, but I guess not as cool as ours).
To move around easily in the canopy areas among the tree branches, our tails have evolved to be really long! For adult Raffles banded langurs, our tails can reach up to 80 centimetres, about the height of a 2-year-old human child…! I wonder what it would look like if we stood next to a human child?
We like to live in groups, and we will also engage in group activities to ensure each other’s safety. Once, a young baby in my group got lost and fell into the hands of a group of humans. Fortunately…
They did not harm our langur baby. They put on gloves before making contact with him. After observing his condition, they fed him some water and comforted him, and finally returned him to where he was lost. We watched from a distance for a while, then brought our baby back home under the cover of the dark night.
Through this story, what I want to share with you is that returning lost baby langurs or monkeys to their mother’s embrace is the best solution. To go deeper, the forest is where we live, where we depend on all things, and where we find our niches, like our mother.
Therefore… please try to keep us in our mother’s embrace as much as possible.
That’s all I want to write,
Raffles’ banded langur – Jey
Trees Write Poems 