Interviewed: Dr Liew Thor Seng, biologist [thorseng@ums.edu.my]
IF YOU don’t know where all the limestone hills are, how will you know which to protect, which to quarry? Moreover, if you want to protect them, which ones do you begin with?
Well, decision-makers now have at their fingertips, Malaysia’s most comprehensive database and map of limestone hills.
(Photo: Screen capture of the online gazetteer showing details of limestone outcrop of interest in Malaysia | Courtesy of Liew Thor Seng)
Continue reading Mapping Every Hill →
Activity: Rock climbing
Interviewed: Chan Yuen-Li, adventure entrepreneur
(Photo: Climbing Batu Caves’ ‘Circumcision’ in the 1990s – pic courtesy of Chan Yuen Li)
YOU SEE them high up a vast, vertical limestone rock face. These are rock climbers: helmeted, harnessed and with ropes hanging off them like vines.
Continue reading Scaling Heights →
Species: Eonycteris spelaea (Mammalia : Chiroptera)
Known Range: Southeast Asia
Size: (Adult) 40-70 millimeter, length of a forearm
Interviewed: Zubaid Akbar Mukhtar Ahmad, bat scientist (zubaid.akbar[at]gmail.com)
(Photo: Eonycteris spelaea by Juliana Senawi)
“DO YOU like durians? Do you like petai?” These are the questions Zubaid asks when he’s trying to win some supporters for bats.
Continue reading Dawn Bat (Eonycteris spelaea) →
Species: Whittenia vermiculum (Gastropoda: Diplommanitidae) *
Known Range: Gunung Rapat limestone hill, Malaysia
Size: (Adult) 1.0 – 1.5 millimeters
Interviewed: Foon Junn Kitt, malacologist
(Photo: Whittenia vermiculum by Foon Junn Kitt)
HOW IS this a snail, and not just a tiny, whitish, swirly plastic tube? Even its species name, vermiculum, means ‘wormy’ in Latin, which aptly describes the snail’s shell.
Continue reading Minute Land Snail (Whittenia vermiculum) →
Species: Pycnoscelus striatus (Insecta: Blattodea)
Known Range: Malaysia, Sumatra, the Philippines
Size: (Adult) 15 mm long , ~diameter of 10-sen coin
Interviewed: Dr Lim Teck Wyn, biologist
(Photo: Shaharin Yussof )
“CUTE” IS how Teck Wyn describes the cave cockroach, Pycnoscelus striatus. “The nymphs”—the juvenile stage of cockroaches—“are adorable, scurrying sort of things.”
Continue reading Cave Cockroach (Pycnoscelus striatus) →
A Malaysian Environmental Journalism Site