Adul, one of our Project Coordinators, shares a wonderful experience of seeing not one, but two sun bears in the forest, and what happens next is fantastic…..
During a follow one morning, myself, Caz and Unyil watched as an adult female gibbon fed in a tree approximately 16-20 metres above us. Suddenly, we heard branches swaying in the adjacent tree; thinking it could be another member of the same gibbon group. We were very surprised to see not one, but two sun bears feeding approximately 10-15 metres away from our female gibbon.
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| Sun bears are often captured on our camera traps positioned throughout our field site. It is the main way we learn about these fascinating animals. |
I was already filming the gibbon, so I quickly diverted my attention to the sun bears instead. One sun bear was equally surprised to see us and decided to quietly leave the feeding tree. The second bear however, did not notice our presence and followed the first bear down the tree. Half way down, the second bear spotted us, panicked and hastily dropped down the tree at a great speed, hitting the first bear on the head before they both landed on the ground.
They sadly did not hang around, but ran off into the forest leaving us laughing at this amazing spectacle. Luckily, I caught the funny fall on my camera so we could watch it again and again! This was not the first time I have seen a sun bear in the Sabangau Forest. I have seen about ten bears in total since I first started working for OuTrop in 2008.
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