Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
move east across Wallace's line to Sulawesi and its nearby islands. They have
been on Sulawesi long enough to have evolved into a distinct species.
Not far from the macaque's forest, in an open grassland dotted with large
trees, we caught a glimpse of something large and brown at the top of a huge
chinaberry tree. It looked at fi rst like a monkey, but as we threaded our way
through the thick brush and approached the tree it was clear that it was a
bear cuscus, the larger of two marsupial cuscus species found on the island. It
gained its common name because of its rather endearing bearlike face. It clung
to a branch with its prehensile tail and munched on young chinaberry leaves.
In this blurring of Wallace's Line we can see echoes of an earlier evo-
lutionary battle between placental and marsupial animals. Two million
years ago, placental mammals from North America were able to invade the
previously isolated South America along the newly formed Isthmus of Pan-
Figure 47
This bear cuscus,
Ailurops ursinus
, also from Tangkoko Park, is one of the
marsupial pouched animals that have penetrated furthest to the west on tectonic fragments
being pushed by the great Australasian plate. But it has not crossed Wallace's Line. Scattered
rumors of cuscus sightings on Borneo and Bali on the western side of the line seem to be
unfounded.
