Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary is located within an oil palm estate about 38 kilometres from Sandakan. In the mid-1990s this 400 acre site was going to be cleared for the development of oil palm when the owner discovered that proboscis monkeys were living in the mangrove forest. He decided to retain this relatively small pocket of forest as a sanctuary for the monkeys. Today Labuk Bay is home to around 150 free ranging proboscis monkeys - the biggest noses in Borneo.
You can see there also Silvered Leaf monkeys, also known as the Silvery Lutung, which have a unique feature: their babies are born a radiant orange gold colour. Experts believe that the babies are orange so that mothers do not lose them when they explore the forest.
Their colouration helps them blend into their surroundings and camouflage them from predators which are usually orange-green colour blind. A baby’s fur would eventually change to the silvery black colour of an adult monkey, a sign of maturation accompanied by a decrease in attention from the mother. By the time these infants are fully grey, they would be fairly independent.
The Oriental-Pied Hornbill, native to South East Asia, this hornbill is the smallest of all the Asian hornbill species and is predominantly black and white in colour. Did you know that a hornbill’s horn is called a casque? The casque is hollow, so not to add excess weight to the bird, and also acts as an acoustic chamber to amplify its call. Male hornbills have larger casques than the females. If you look closely, Oriental-Pied Hornbills have eyelashes, a trait unique to hornbills and shared among the different species. Like other hornbills, they mate for life. When the mother is hatching the eggs, she molts completely, leaving her defenceless and incapable of flight. Thus in order to protect his family, the father seals the mother hornbill inside a hole of a tall tree with mud, leaving a slit to feed the female and her chicks when they hatch.
