The monkey with the biggest nose and belly in Borneo is both an expert swimmer and an acrobat. Now it's also doing a vanishing act. The first Europeans to lay eyes on the proboscis monkey described it in prose that ran the gamut from revulsion to incredulity. Zoologists named it Nasalis larvatus after the male's huge, fleshy nose, which overhangs its mouth. Native Borneans put a slightly different spin on things: they saw the monkey as a caricature of big-nosed Europeans - or, more specifically, Dutch sailors and plantation owners, complete with pot belly, hairy, sunburnt shoulders (reddish-brown fur) and a ruddy nose. They christened it monyet belanda: 'Dutch monkey'. To get my own perspective on this highly endangered monkey, I travelled to theKinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, with wildlife photographer Rob Stewart. Borneo is the only place in the world to see the proboscis. It is rarely found in zoos, as it adapts poorly to artificial environments and diets, becoming depressed and refusing to eat. (That said, there are proboscis monkeys in San Diego, the Bronx, Singapore, Wilhelma (Stuttgart) and Surabaya zoos.) In the wild, the proboscis favours the largely inaccessible dense foliage of coastal mangrove and peat swamps, which means that only where populations exist in inland, tree-lined riverine habitats is there any chance of seeing it.
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