Kt 



..uala lumpur, the capital of Malay- 

 sia, is a modern city of half a million 

 people, but to the north and east there 

 is excellent tropical rain forest within 

 fifteen miles of the center of town. It 

 is no trick at all to have lunch of rice and 

 roast mouse deer with the aborigines in a 

 forest camp, and be back in town in time 

 for dinner at home. All that is needed 

 is a jeep for transport, and a hot bath to 



Report from Malaysia 



D. DWIGHT DAVIS 

 Curator, Vertebrate Anatomy 



they could be trapped alive and trans- 

 ported back to a laboratory. 



As it turned out, the Zoology Depart- 

 ment of the University of Malaya was an 

 excellent base of operations for such a 

 program. It has fine laboratories and 

 field equipment, and the staff really 

 know the country around Kuala Lum- 

 pur, which saved a good deal of the time 

 that usually has to be spent on explora- 



This greater gym- 

 tture was trapped 

 alive for behavioral 

 studies. 



wash the jungle off before dressing for 

 dinner. 



When I accepted an invitation to fill 

 a temporary post in the Zoology Depart- 

 ment at the University of Malaya last 

 year, I wondered how much time teach- 

 ing and administrative duties would 

 leave for my own research program. 

 The Museum needed a reference collec- 

 tion of Malayan mammals and other 

 vertebrates, but making such collections 

 is normally a full time job and it can 

 scarcely be done on a university campus. 

 Besides, ever since I had first encoun- 

 tered them on an earlier trip to Borneo, 

 I had wanted to investigate the behavior 

 of some very primitive mammals that 

 live in Borneo and Malaya — provided 



Page 6 MAY 



tion. The tropical forest is so close to 

 the campus that it was always possible 

 to get out for a few days or hours. 



The mammals I wanted for behavi- 

 oral studies are not exhibited in zoos and 

 few people have ever seen them alive or 

 even know that such creatures exist. 

 They are rather drab-looking insecti- 

 vores — the greater gymnure (Echinoso- 

 rex), nearly as big as an opossum, and 

 the lesser gymnure (Hylomys), not much 

 larger than a good-sized mouse — that 

 somehow survived in the great tropical 

 forests of southeastern Asia long after 

 their relatives became extinct in other 

 parts of the earth. They can scarcely be 

 expected to be handsome, since they are 

 among the most primitive of living pla- 



cental mammals, but they are of scien- 

 tific interest because the very first pla- 

 cental mammals must have looked and 

 acted very much like these. 



Trying to trap gymnures alive was 

 frustrating at first. We set up a camp 

 in the mountains twenty-five miles be- 

 hind Kuala Lumpur and put out every 

 trap we had. Gymnures are said to find 

 durian irresistible so we hunted out a 

 durian tree in the jungle and baited 

 traps with the fruit. We offered im- 

 mense rewards to the aborigines for 

 every gymnure they brought in alive. 

 At the end of six days we had caught 

 one lesser gymnure, and it was dead in 

 the trap. Our luck was even worse at 

 other localities. I began to fear that the 

 work on gymnure behavior would have 

 to be washed out. Then just before 

 Christmas we went back to the original 

 camp and got three gymnures the first 

 day and in a week I had all the material 

 I needed. Their locomotion and feed- 

 ing behavior are now preserved on mo- 

 tion picture film, and we have embalmed 

 specimens for anatomical studies that 

 will tie in with the data on behavior. 



Making forays into the jungle between 

 faculty meetings worked out so well, 

 thanks largely to the geography of the 

 hinterland behind Kuala Lumpur, that 

 the Museum now has a collection of 

 about three hundred Malayan mam- 

 mals and several hundred amphibians 

 and reptiles. Some are species not pre- 

 viously represented in the Museum's re- 

 search collections, and others provide 

 good series of forms that were inade- 

 quately represented. Several mammals 

 were embalmed at the University of 

 Malaya for later anatomical study at 

 Chicago, and the skeletons of others 

 were preserved. The fact that modern 

 university facilities and rich tropical rain 

 forest are almost side by side at Kuala 

 Lumpur makes the University of Ma- 

 laya probably the best place in the world 

 for many kinds of tropical research. 



