or fastest. Modern research has shown
it is common to find that the most
successful are those who able to form
cooperative win-win strategies like the
mixed flock foragers.
Being described as Malaysia’s David
Attenborough is a hard act to live up to,
but, like the veteran British naturalist,
Irshad has the knack of simplifying
complexity in ways that ordinary people
can immediately understand and adopt as
their own insight. With a quarter century
of experience under his belt, he is able
to reveal the rich detail in the apparently
commonplace, too. A line of termites cross
our path, a seemingly benign event that
nevertheless inspires a brief nature lesson.
Termite queens are the longest-lived
insects, we are told. She can live for over 60
years. She is monogamous, which means a
termite mound is home for a single nuclear
family, albeit one with 300,000 brothers
and sisters. Armed with this newfound
insight and knowledge, we are suddenly
more careful not to cause damage as we
pass the mounds.
We stop next at a humdrum little plant,
Euphorbia hirta. The sap from this plant is
used here to treat warts. A South African
on an earlier walk told Irshad that it was
used there for the same purpose. Later,
a Kenyan told him the same. A shared
knowledge is revealed, and subsequently
explored. The use of this little plant traces
human migration out of Africa, along the
Indian Ocean rim to Southeast Asia and to
the Pacific and beyond. Mothers separated
by 7,000 km – and 70,000 years! – have
treated their children with the same
medicine: salicylic acid.To be a good naturalist, one needs to be on
intimate terms with the forest. Irshad tells
us when an eagle’s nest was rebuilt after it
was destroyed in a storm and recounts the
tragedies and early struggles of the White-
bellied Sea Eagle pair to raise young in this
nest. Irshad has been walking these forests
for over 20 years and notes the changes.
Much that he sees is not good.Thoughtless road building has fragmented
the forest, affecting the future of the