Jungle Nightlife of the Cameron Highlands (Malaysia): A Photo Tour

I'm no expert with a camera, but I bought an old used DSLR a couple of years ago and I like to play around with it once in a while. I've written here and here about my two month internship in Terengganu, Malaysia. What I didn't mention was that about halfway through the internship my wife came to visit me and we headed off for a 10-day vacation.

My wife and I are both biologists and nature lovers, so we had intended to spent most of the vacation time at one of our favourite places: Taman Negara, the oldest jungle in the world (click here to see a video that I took there of a massive spider eating a caterpillar while it's still thrashing around). But this time my wife was 6 months pregnant and the heat proved too much for her, so we instead spent most of our time in the comparatively cool climate of the Cameron Highlands.

The Cameron Highlands are very popular with local tourists and are known for their tea plantations, strawberry farms and having the highest concentration of Land Rovers (per capita) in the world. It's impossible to walk down the street without seeing 5 Land Rovers. They also have plenty of tasty Indian food. I could happily spend months there, just sitting around all day eating Indian food until I explode.

The Highlands are, as you might imagine, in the mountains, and as such there are a number of somewhat-maintained jungle hikes that tourists can embark upon. We checked out a couple of these during the day,found a promising one, then headed back to town to enjoy some nice Indian food and wait. Once darkness settled in, we grabbed our cameras and headed back to the jungle trail we had picked out.

Even during the day you can see some pretty cool things in the jungle. But once the lights go out, the creepy crawlies start to party.

Here is a small selection of my favourite pictures:

This monster cicada was the first creepy crawly I found. It was hanging out on the sidewalk, before I even reached the jungle trail!

It may not be clear on the picture, but this spider is enormous. If you look closely, you will notice two of it's legs are different from the rest. That's because it lost them and then grew them back!

This spider has a very strange looking body and appears to be holding an egg sac.

Stick insects are well named and can be very difficult to spot.

Don't mess with centipedes. They are venomous predators. You won't die from a bite, but it can be quite painful.

This beautiful weevil was one of my favourite finds.

Mating moths with glowing red eyes.

This butterfly looks like it's on fire.

Predator and prey.

I found this gorgeous lizard near the end of my hike. He's not camera shy.

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I hope you've enjoyed this little introduction to jungle night life. Don't forget to upvote, comment and follow me. You are also welcome to resteem!

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Related articles by me that you might enjoy:

Doing science in a developing country: my 2 month internship in Malaysia

Enormous spider eats a live caterpillar: night time in the Malaysian jungle

Two months in the Islamic heart of Malaysia

[//]:# (!steemitworldmap 4.387490 lat 102.399788 long Jungle night life of the Cameron Highlands (Malaysia): A photo tour d3scr)