At Tawau Hills Park in East Sabah, Malaysian Borneo,
3 species of primate are abundant around the Park HQ buildings including two families of Red Langurs, 4 Gibbon families and a very large group of Long-tailed Macaques.
It appears that at night these primates prefer to roost in trees close to the HQ buildings on the edge of the clearing even though there are plenty of tall trees in the forest at the back of the buildings.
One of the natural predators of these primates are female Clouded Leopards who are light weight enough to chase primates through the canopy. However although Clouded Leopards are relatively common at Tawau Hills Park they are only recorded higher up along the trails to Gunung Lucia over an hours walk from Park HQ. Male Clouded Leopards are often camera trapped along the ridge top pig trails near the summit of Gunung Lucia. Females are rarely camera trapped.
Female Clouded Leopards are extremely secretive. They are believed to be sit and wait predators targeting primate roosts. As a result primates in Borneo change their roosts every night. We suspected that female Clouded Leopards were regular visitors to the primate roosts near Park HQ even though they are rarely seen. We therefore obtained two life size stuffed toys decorated to look like Clouded Leopards and placed them on the rear of the main hostel at Tawau Hills Park opposite the forest at the back. This experiment was intended to reveal if the local primates would recognize Clouded Leopards.
The result was almost immediate. Both Long Tailed Macaques and Red Langurs reacted with prolonged alarm calls and moved away from the area.
A video below shows the white morph alpha male Red Langur at Tawau Hills calling in alarm at the fake Clouded Leopards
Clearly Clouded Leopards are well known to the local primates living next to Park HQ even though tourists and visitors never see them.
Thanks to the staff of 1 Stop Borneo including Shavez Cheema, Chun Xing Wong, Yulinda Wahyuni and Ledumin for help with this experiment.
The white alpha male of a Red Langur family at Tawau Hills reacting to the sight ogf a fake Clouded Leopard toy at the rear of the hostel at Tawau Hills Park HQ.
