48 A NATURALIST IN BORNEO 



night my prisoner succeeded in prising off the stone 

 and escaped. When the animal is molested it curls 

 itself up into a tight ball in order to protect the scale- 

 less and vulnerable under-surface of the body, and it 

 is well-nigh impossible to pull it out straight, so great 

 is its muscular strength. If imprisoned in a space 

 sufficiently confined to hinder it from curling up, the 

 Manis strongly arches its back and exerts such a pres- 

 sure on the roof of its prison that this, if not most 

 strongly secured, bursts open. More than one observer 

 has seen this species "swarm" up tree-trunks, the 

 strong claws getting a good hold of the bark. My 

 Chinese assistant in Sarawak saw a Manis hurl itself 

 from a tree and, curled up in a semicircle, fall on its 

 back ; it seemed to be none the worse for its fall, and, 

 rolling on to its feet, walked off. 



This chapter may close with a pleasing Malay story 

 of the ingenuity of this animal. When the Manis can 

 find no ants' or Termites' nests, it lies down in the 

 jungle curled up and pretends to be dead. Those 

 universal scavengers the ants flock in hundreds to feast 

 on the supposed corpse, and as the edges of the 

 Manis's scales are slightly raised owing to its curled- 

 up position, the ants swarm underneath them in order 

 to attack the soft skin. When the Manis considers 

 that it has collected sufficient numbers of the ants, the 

 corpse comes to life again, straightens itself out, and 

 in so doing shuts down the scales and imprisons the 

 ants. It then trots off to the nearest pool of water 

 or stream, into which it plunges and arches its back, 

 thus raising the scales again. The ants float off on to 

 the surface of the water and are licked up with the 

 long slender tongue. 



