The Bumbling Bug

Travelling around South-East Asia you get to see a bunch of mind-blowing things, from breath-taking landscapes to perspective changing culture. But as a biologist you can bet it is the local fauna that has me captivated! Imagine trudging through the dense Bornean rainforests, the air hot and humid, a chorus of wildlife buzzing all around, when a giant cloud-like butterfly glides gracefully above your head – more of a mirage than reality. It doesn’t flap its wings, instead it simply floats, levitating. After a day of hard work, you crawl into bed under your bug net, only to have a firefly rest inches from you, a tiny light in the pitch-black rainforest. Southeast Asia is the place to be to see next-level wildlife, and today I bring to you my 10 favourite fauna friends that I made on my own travels.  10. Old-World Porcupine ( Hystricidae ) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Hystrix_brachyura%2C_Malayan_porcupine.jpg Where to find : Throughout Europe, A...

Picture this. You've travelled for 14 hours on a plane from the UK. You have watched the last 5 years’ worth of Marvel movies back to back, you've drunk water from a sealed plastic cup and maybe, if you’re lucky, you squeezed in a couple hours sleep. And finally, you have arrived, having travelled a quarter of the way round the world and you can finally step foot on Malaysian soil. And what’s the first thing you notice? Oh boy, it is hot. Believe me, it gets hotter still when you try to climb all these stairs! You start to sweat instantly, in f act there's no point worrying about sweat patches because you will be drenched within minutes no matter what you do. This is going to be a sticky couple of weeks. And then you get into your air-conditioned taxi and forget all about it.  Until you get out at your accommodation, and you are again met with a wall of heat. 'How do people tolerate this?' you think. You are reluctant to even pick up your b...