ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[phatio]

Was Borneo once a land of tigers?

The scientific consensus is that while tigers did inhabit the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali, and still live in Sumatra, they never lived in Borneo.
Indigenous peoples in Borneo say otherwise. So-called ‘tiger fangs,’ for example, often feature in traditional Dayak ceremonies.
Some researchers wonder if the question of whether tigers lived in Borneo has gotten short shrift from experts who should be paying more attention to local communities.

PALANGKARAYA, Indonesia — One recent morning I paid a visit to Iber Djamal, a leader of the Dayak Ngaju indigenous people. He had invited us to see his mandau, a traditional Dayak weapon.

When I saw the mandau, which is a kind of machete, my attention focused not on the blade but on the fangs adorning it. What surprised me was that they were said to be tiger fangs.

“These are tiger fangs, not leopard fangs,” Iber said. “The fangs that decorate this mandau are from the animals that have been killed by the weapons inherited from my ancestors. Besides tigers, there are crocodiles, bears, leopards and boars.” What kind of tiger was killed with this mandau?

“A tiger in Kalimantan. It was killed by my ancestor. There used to be tigers in Kalimantan.”

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Iber Djamal shows off the tiger fangs on his mandau. Photo by Jemmie Delvian

Iber’s explanation certainly differs from the general understanding about tigers in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo island. The present scientific consensus is that no one in Kalimantan has ever found a tiger. Researchers think the only tigers in Indonesia are in Bali (now extinct), Java (thought to be extinct) and Sumatra (only a few hundred left).

Iber said that the tiger — called harimau in Indonesian and haramaung in Dayak Ngaju — was one of the animals most commonly hunted by his ancestors. “We believe that if a man can hunt and kill a tiger when his wife is pregnant, the child will grow up to be a king or a leader,” he said. If a mandau is adorned with tiger fangs, it will endow whomever wields it with courage.

“Maybe because they’re worth so much to some people, tigers in Kalimantan have been hunted to extinction,” he said. He added that if anyone in his tribe ever found a tiger, it wouldn’t be hunted, “because these animals need to be protected.”

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Fangs from a tiger or a clouded leopard?

After encountering this phenomenon, I contacted Yoan Dinata, chairperson of Forum HarimauKita, an NGO, about the possibility of a long-lost species of Bornean tiger. “There is no record or scholarship of tigers ever living in Kalimantan,” Dinata said. “But there is a possibility that in the past they did live there, because the islands of Java, Sumatra and Borneo were once fused with mainland Southeast Asia.”

According to Dinata, in Kalimantan today there is only the Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi). “I don’t know if the fangs adorning all of those mandau blades are the fangs of tigers or clouded leopards,” he said. Dinata suggested that there should be more research as to the origin of the fangs. “If they really are tiger fangs, we should study how old they are.”

Scientifically, the nonexistence of tigers in Kalimantan raises many questions among researchers. The merging in ancient times of Borneo with mainland Southeast Asia certainly brought to it a variety of Asiatic wildlife. As a predator, the path of the tiger in the past was certainly influenced by the distribution of its prey. From a habitat perspective the characterstics of Sumatra today are similar with those of Kalimantan.

“Almost all of the animals in Kalimantan are also in Sumatra, including the orangutan and elephant. But surprisingly in Kalimantan today there aren’t any tigers,” Dinata said. “Dayak people’s recognition of the existence of tigers in the past would be an interesting thing to study.”

On the other hand, many of the sources of scientific findings in the past century are by Western researchers — it’s very rare to get information from local communities to be summarized in the scientific record. For example, findings that the Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) might exist in Kalimantan were questioned by some researchers. Only after evidence such as horns and tracks were found did experts begin to seriously explore the existence of this species. As a result, experts finally met the Sumatran rhino in Borneo.

Maybe at a historical moment the tracks of a Bornean tiger will be revealed based on information from local communities. Who knows?
https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/was-bo...of-tigers/
by Taufik Wijaya on 7 November 2016 | Translated by Philip Jacobson

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Recently I came across an article about Bornean Tiger written by a local bornean guy. very interesting but of course it's in indonesian, you can use translate if you want to read the whole story.
https://folksofdayak.wordpress.com/2018/...tau-fakta/
it is said there were/are tigers in Borneo. The indigenous peoples of Borneo, commonly known as Dayak called the big cat "Haramaong, Remaong, Lencau" etc. and they know the larger striped cat is different from smaller clouded leopard which they called "Kule".
according to the writter, he/she has some Bornean tiger's canines which is much larger than their Sumatran's cousin. unfortunately he/she dind't post the comparison picture. The Dayak people also made "Besunung", one of their traditional clothes from real Bornean tiger skins.

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@GrizzlyClaw and @tigerluver i need your help once again to determine the originality of these allegedly Bornean tiger canines.

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let say if these canines and skins were real, some people suggest they probably got those stuff from trading with sumatran, javan or malayan people where tigers existed there. but i highly doubt that, as the indigenous peoples of Borneo are forest dweller peoples. They live completely from their jungle, their home, the only resources they knew for so long. until fairly recently these people hardly knew about money, let alone trading with foreign people.

Here's some sighting reports from my quick search. May 2017
https://www.borneonews.co.id/berita/6344...da-harimau
witness insisted they saw a tiger not a clouded leopard because the animal is larger and longer, and it's a striped cat not spotted. the animal's skin is as clean and soft as carpet, they added. 

from March 2018
https://www.indopos.co.id/read/2018/03/0...uk-sekolah

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the authority checking animals pugmark

Interestingly, all of the story above coming from the same area, more or less around the yellow circle in the map below

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what do you think guys? is this false alarm or have we been missing something here?

another interesting read
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...cal_record
https://www.researchgate.net/publication..._existence Reply