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The Orangutan and Jungle
Kalimantan comprises roughly the southern three-quarters of the equatorial
islands of Borneo, the 3rd largest island in the world. after Greenland and New
Guinea. Many areas of Kalimantan are almost untouched by Western occasions. In
the Heart of Darkness, the character Marlovwe remembers being mesmerized as a
child by a map showing vast, uncharted jungle with a river running through it;
"It fascinated me a snake would a bird - a silly little bird". Maps of
Kalimantan rivers-laced interior still excite the imagination. Twenty-one
species of primates are represented on Borneo. All have adapted to the life and,
like man, have developed large forward-facing eyes which give them binocular
vision of judges distances when leaping through trees. The spectacular tarsier
derives from the Tertiary Era of 70 million years ago and stands at the
crossroads on the evolutionary chart where man and ape branch off from one
another. Scarcely larger than a rat with ghostly globular eyes, the native Dayak
believe that the souls of death anchestors are reincarnated in its tiny body.
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