Diary of Manas- Malayan Giant Squirrel and Capped Langur

[Samrat Sarkar]

A large group of Capped langurs were sitting on the branches of the trees in front of us. They were busy with themselves. Suddenly a pair of Malayan Giant squirrel caught my notice. They were some distance away from the group of the Capped Langurs. One was following the other from this tree to that tree. The colours of their skins were visibly different. One of the squirrels had more brownish patches on its hind legs and on its back and was larger in size than the other. The second one which was following the first was dark in colour and was smaller in size. This difference in colour among the Giant Malayan squirrel is natural. This depends on the amount of melanin deposits on their skins. The dark and small squirrel starts following the bigger squirrel. This may be due to two different reasons. Firstly, during breeding period the male squirrel follows and chases the female which is a part of their foreplay. Their breeding season starts around the month of March. The time I am talking about was in the middle of February. It was not possible for us to identify which was the male and which one was the female. I could not see the mammary gland in either of the squirrel even after trying my best. Then are both of them were male? I could not say that for sure. Here comes the second possible reason. The more colourful one was present there beforehand. It may be assumed that it was the dominant one in that area. And the dark one was the intruder.

A researcher named Ludek J Dobroruka of the erstwhile Czechoslovakia made extensive observation on Malayan Giant squirrel between 1969 and 1974. He observed that the squirrel which stays in a particular area behaves like a dominant one and when some other one visits from outside it is considered as intruder in that place and remains submissive in nature. If the dominant one turns out to be male then the intruder is always seen to follow the dominant one. On many occasions the dormant one is seen to clasp the intruder and performs the ritualized copulatory behaviour. One researcher R H Horwich has written in his book named "The ontogeny of social behaviour in the Grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)" that in situations like this the grey squirrel performs the precocial sexual play in a similar manner.

Ludek J Dobroruka had some more observations on how the intruder behaves. They may sometimes shrink themselves, may bend forward or may keep their front legs folded a little bit to display their submissiveness. Now if we look closely the series of pictures here we can see that, the front and colourful one is the dominant one and he has hold his head high, is moving forward with confident strides and has kept his tail straight and its hairs upright while the hind one has its head lowered, the front legs are not stretched that way and the tail is limp.