Photographs and Text by Bandana Aul Arora
In the world I grew up in, dolls were more of an interest for young girls, but even as a child I was more interested in exploring the outdoors. The first time I heard the roar of a tiger, in a zoo, stirred something in me. I just had to look for one in the wild and thus began my fascination for the Felidae, particularly the big cats. In 2001, I travelled to the Nicobar Islands as part of my Master’s degree and was tasked with the challenge of locating and studying the bats of the mysterious islands. I could find no one who had studied bats here before, and my focus thus shifted from cats to bats!
I have, of course, often been asked why I chose to study bats. Depending on my mood, my answers have varied from “Because bats hang upside and look at life from the right perspective,” to “I am not a morning person, so I chose a nocturnal species.” Truth be told, I have long held a fascination for caves and have always been interested in delving into the obscure. My first experience of caves was in the Rutland Island, South Andaman, along with Dr. Ravi Sankaran and Sanctuary’s editor, Bittu Sahgal, wherein as a novice, I was denied entry into the caves. I made a promise to myself that one day, I would explore them all! Today, I can confidently say that I kept that promise; I have surveyed more than 300 caves in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
During her studies, the author came across an orphaned juvenile black-eared fying fox Pteropus melanotus, found only in Andaman, Nicobar and Sumatra.
My adventurous, memorable and often challenging work in the Nicobar Islands began at the southernmost tip – the Great Nicobar Island (GNI) – in 2002. A three-day journey of 528 km. by ship was the only mode of travel to the islands then. All travel begins early in the morning as the tides across the 10-degree channel are not navigable later in the day. The ship travels from Port Blair via Hut Bay (Little Andaman), Car Nicobar, Tressa (pronounced as Taa-rasa), Kamorta and then we would make landfall at Campbell Bay. While travelling, we would joke about landing a little south in the islands of Sumatra and being deported back to India – that would have been one easy plane ride back home! At that time, communication was by snail mail, via letters, and an occasional phone call courtesy a vintage pay phone booth (if the owner was not asleep by the time you came back from your field trip). There were no mobile phones… no connectivity at all.
I remember the first of my trips. My assistant, Saw Johnny and I, reached Campbell Bay and checked into the forest house with a friend. Almost immediately, I felt like I had arrived at my second home. Working on the remote island somehow always seemed secure. I spent a lot of time in the mangroves and the jungles. The islanders never made me feel ‘unsafe’, even in the initial days, when they did not know me, thanks to the tribal ethos that fosters a genuine respect for women. I cannot imagine feeling as safe and free working almost anywhere else.
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The lesser short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus brachyotis is a frugivorous bat found in South and Southeast Asia.
The Forest Department officials and islanders were equally courteous. Being the only woman researcher on the islands, I got extra support from them and after they saw us working through the night to protect their forests, the association between us grew strong and they would then go out of their way to make me feel at home. The Gol Ghars (round-shaped family houses on stilts) were opened up for me; they would place guards for my field trips to the interiors of the islands, especially when my work took me to Kopenheat (the Western border of Great Nicobar Island), as it goes through the East-West Road from Campbell Bay – via the Shompen Hut. When we were out for weeks in the forest, the islanders would call my mother and tell her that all was well with me. Often on returning, I would learn of multiple calls made to my mother from the island, as most of them assumed the duty to ensure that my parents would sleep in peace.
Prior to my arrival on the islands, the effort to systematically map the bat fauna in the bay islands had never been attempted. I successfully documented 17 species in the Andaman group and 12 in the Nicobar group. Whilst recording species and ecological information on the roosting habitats, diet and threats faced by bats, we also recorded severe pressure on their populations on account of habitat degradation and change, human settlements, introduction of exotics and enhanced activity in the islands.
The author recorded 12 bat species from the Nicobars including Myotis dryas of family Vespertilionidae.
As my work progressed, south of the 10-degree channel in the Nicobar Islands, I commenced the survey from GNI. It took me six years to map the habitat and distribution of bat fauna of the 24 islands that formed the archipelago.
A view of Campbell Bay in Great Nicobar. The author surveyed Great Nicobar, Little Nicobar, Kondul and the Pulo Milo islands. She followed up her work in Central Nicobar comprising eight islands, Nancowrie, Kamorta, Katchal, Trinket, Tressa, Bompuka, Chowra, and Tillangchong, and then moved to northern Nicobar comprising the Car Nicobar Islands.
My survey of the bats of the Nicobar Islands resulted in interesting data. This included the rediscovery of the only endemic, solitary roosting Pteropus faunulus, and a medium-sized flying fox Myotis horsfeildii dryas. Murina cyclotis was also reported for the first time in Great Nicobar. This is a new range for records of bat species in these islands.
By 2007, I had completed my survey in the southern Nicobar group, comprising Great Nicobar, Little Nicobar, Kondul and the Pulo Milo islands. I then followed by working in Central Nicobar comprising eight islands, Nancowrie, Kamorta, Katchal, Trinket, Tressa, Bompuka, Chowra, and Tillangchong. And then moved to northern Nicobar comprising the Car Nicobar Islands.
A monitor lizard climbs the steep walls of a cave in seacrch of some Hipposideros species bats.
I largely explored Great Nicobar on foot, with Johnny, my field assistant, who helped me lug camera, data books and sampling equipment. We shuttled between islands using a small boat, called a dungi. Initially, we had to hitch-hike with the local fishermen until we got one for ourselves. Once, on an early and rainy morning, we hitchhiked to Kondul island from Campbell Bay with the local fishermen. At night, I dreamt of white elephants, and the islanders said it meant that there will be more rain. Lo and behold… it rained continuously all the seven days we were there. No bat-related work got done! But we did swim into the sea-shore caves in Kondul and found Taphozous sp inside. A week later it was time to head back to Campbell Bay in the same dungi. Sensing my disappointment, the local fishermen kindly promised to take me there again when it wasn’t raining.
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A lesser short-nosed fruit bat pup hangs on to its mother’s belly. Bat mothers routinely carry their pups, almost one third their own weight, while the pups cling to her underarm nipple and hold on to her waist with their toes.
Needless to add, I returned to the Islands several times. One of my favourite flying mammal study groups were the microbats (Microchiroptera).
The author and her team take a much needed break during field work in the Nicobars.
Anthropogenic factors are, sadly, poised to rob the islands of their unique, under studied, sensitive and irreplaceable ecosystem, which evolved over millions of years. Take the example of endemic flying foxes on the islands. If they go extinct, no amount of reintroduction efforts will succeed because this species shares a unique interdependence with the islands’ flora and fauna. No other part of the world possesses this and we have not even scratched the surface of research required to document the islands’ biodiversity.
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Sanctuary’s Editor Bittu Sahgal with the author during her survey of bats in the Nicobar Islands.
The primary threat to bats, wherever they are found, is roost disturbance and habitat degradation. Some instances of hunting by locals does take place. But community-led initiatives to monitor foraging sites and roosting sites near human-occupied areas helps. And, when combined with more frequent and rigorous scientific research, we are beginning to understand the immense ecological services these oft-maligned mammals offer. A ban on any hunting by working together with the community to mitigate threats to cave systems and other roosting sites needs to be prioritised. But these days, we hear of several developmental projects planned for the Great Nicobar and I worry that we could lose species even before they have been fully studied. Some reports suggest that over a million trees might be felled. Irrespective of any mitigation steps suggested, being an island, this cannot bode well for bats, or virtually any other species on the Great Nicobar Island because the vast bulk of extinctions that have taken place in the past centuries have, you guessed it, been on islands that offered species in distress no retreat.
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