Lena Chow submitted a video clip and a note: “I haven’t been contributing for a while but thought I’d share this sighting of a pair of Malayan Colugos (Cynocephalus variegatus) which I video-ed last weekend at Bukit Batok Nature Park. The intensity and apparent aggression displayed gripped our attention. At first, we thought we were lucky to have spotted a mating pair! Then as the actions turned more violent, we wondered if it was a territorial fight? Or… did we just witness a rape scene!?”
We contacted Norman Lim who did research on the colugo at the National University of Singapore that resulted in the book “Colugo: The Flying Lemur of South-east Asia” that was published by Draco Publishing & Distribution Pte. Ltd. and National University of Singapore in 2007. Through the courtesy of Prof. Peter Ng of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, who was Norman’s supervisor, we managed to get Norman’s input as given below.
“The individual that was pinned down looks like a female due to its larger size. However, the other individual is rather large and I am unsure if it is a male or female. (Both males and females can be greyish in colouration.) As such, I really cannot say much. But it goes to show that we know so little about this charismatic species despite having such high densities of them in our nature reserves and nature parks. We should have active research on this understudied species.”
Lena Chow & Norman Lim
Singapore
6th December 2017
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