76 A NATURALIST IN BORNEO 



habits, are brought less into contact with snakes, so that 

 their natural fear has been lost; but it may be pointed 

 out that the Orang is almost as arboreal in its habits as 

 the Gibbon. Furthermore, a very large number of snakes 

 in the Malayan region are tree-dwellers. Baboons, 

 Macaques, Langurs, Spider-Monkeys, all showed ex- 

 treme fear at the sight of snakes, but Lemurs, the next 

 order to Primates, exhibited no fear at all, but instead, 

 interest and curiosity. Other animals, such as rodents, 

 ruminants, and birds, were quite indifferent to the 

 presence of snakes. Mr. H. N. Ridley, 1 however, 

 obtained rather different results in some similar experi- 

 ments conducted on animals kept in captivity in the 

 Botanic Gardens, Singapore. He found the Orang 

 indifferent to snakes, but I believe that the specimen 

 was very young, and its horror perhaps had not 

 developed. "Common monkeys [i.e. Macaques] are 

 usually very excited, crowding together to look at it, 

 and chattering loudly. . . . The binturong, on bringing 

 a cobra near it, turned its face away as if in horror, but 

 really no doubt recognizing that its most vulnerable 

 portion was its face. The Water Mungoose, Herpestes 

 brachyurus, like the Indian Mungoose, bristles up its 

 fur and attacks and devours the snake. Some deer, 

 when a large python was brought past their paddock, 

 though at some distance, crowded together at the bars, 

 gazing at it and stamping their feet, evidently recognizing 

 it as a dangerous enemy." To these experiments I may 

 add that a small workshop attached to the Sarawak 

 Museum was freed in a day or two of a veritable plague 

 of Rats by a small Python that had found its way into 

 this happy hunting ground. The Python unfortunately 

 1 Journ. Roy. As. Soc. S. Br., No. 32 (1899), p. 204. 



