I Never Saw Two Full-Grown Animals Together, But Both
Males And Females Are Sometimes Accompanied By Half-Grown Young
Ones, While, At Other Times, Three Or Four Young Ones Were Seen
In Company.
Their food consists almost exclusively of fruit, with
occasionally leaves, buds, and young shoots.
They seem to prefer
unripe fruits, some of which were very sour, others intensely
bitter, particularly the large red, fleshy arillus of one which
seemed an especial favourite. In other cases they eat only the
small seed of a large fruit, and they almost always waste and
destroy more than they eat, so that there is a continual rain of
rejected portions below the tree they are feeding on. The Durian
is an especial favourite, and quantities of this delicious fruit
are destroyed wherever it grows surrounded by forest, but they
will not cross clearings to get at them. It seems wonderful how
the animal can tear open this fruit, the outer covering of which
is so thick and tough, and closely covered with strong conical
spines. It probably bites off a few of these first, and then,
making a small hole, tears open the fruit with its powerful
fingers.
The Mias rarely descends to the ground, except when pressed by
hunger, it seeks succulent shoots by the riverside; or, in very
dry weather, has to search after water, of which it generally
finds sufficient in the hollows of leaves. Only once I saw two
half-grown Orangs on the ground in a dry hollow at the foot of
the Simunjon hill.
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