A free field guide to the mammals of Borneo — 239 species, each with photographs, scientific names, Malay and Indonesian names, and the reserves and rivers where you have a realistic chance of finding them. Nothing to buy and nothing to sign up for.
What Borneo's mammal list looks like
Borneo has one of the richest mammal faunas in Asia and, for a visitor, one of the most rewarding. The headline animals are well known — Bornean orangutan, proboscis monkey, Bornean elephant, sun bear — but the list that keeps people coming back is the one underneath. Five wild cats, including the Sunda clouded leopard and the Bornean bay cat, which is endemic and barely seen by anyone. The full run of civets. Pangolin, colugo, tarsier, slow loris, banded linsang, and a set of flying squirrels that only make sense after dark.
Bats alone account for 89 of the species here, which is worth knowing before you assume a mammal list is a list of things you can see from a vehicle. Squirrels and murid rodents add another 66. The guide covers all of them, including the ones you are most likely to meet as a shape in a torch beam.
Where the mammals are
Deramakot Forest Reserve is the flagship — a certified production forest with a road network you are allowed to drive all night, and the best odds anywhere for clouded leopard and the smaller carnivores. Tabin and Danum Valley are the other serious night-drive sites. The Kinabatangan gives you primates, elephants and otters from a boat with much less effort. We have a much longer write-up of how the nights are actually run in the mammal watching guide, and every site we cover is in the regions guide.
Using this instead of a book
A printed mammal guide gives you plates, measurements and skull keys, and it works when your phone is dead. This gives you photographs of live animals rather than paintings, more species than fit in most single volumes, local names you can use with a driver or boatman, and a link from each animal to the reserves it is genuinely recorded in. There is an honest comparison of the two on the field guide page.
Tap any mammal below for photographs, identification notes, habitat and range.
All 239 species
Each card has two colour-coded toggles:
turns lime green — adds it to your trip planner
turns blue — marks it as seen in my sightings
