Leopard cats and pygmy elephants: What it’s like to go mammal watching on the Malaysian side of Borneo

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We lurched along an unpaved road in the night, walls of trees and knotted vines on either side. In the darkness lurked some of the world’s most unusual mammals, and I had come to Borneo to fulfil a lifelong dream to see them: Catlike civets, scaled anteaters called pangolins and big-eyed colugos that spread their body flat as they glide from trunk to trunk.
In the open back of a pickup truck, two wildlife spotters stood in front of me, whirling their flashlights. To my right stood my father, whose lifelong obsession with wildlife had inspired my own. Clothes damp from the humidity, we plunged deeper into the moonlit jungle.
My father and I had long wanted to travel to Borneo together, inspired by an online community of people called mammal watchers, who shared tantalising stories about their sightings on the island on the website Mammal Watching.