The writer measuring a new species of tree kangaroo discovered in the jungles of Irian Jaya.
Credit: Tim Flannery
I would have loved to follow Yonas to his camp, but our nets and traps were already set out and our hunters were scouring the bush at this lower location. It would take at least a day to reorganise ourselves, and Yonas could not wait.
Our hunters continued to find nothing and I was losing hope. But at last one morning I saw Dingo emerge from the forest. A smiling Yonas, holding up two fingers, followed behind. As he opened his noken - his hunting bag - I divined from this gesture that he had captured two tree kangaroos.
As the contents of the noken were revealed, I was all but overcome by near-simultaneous sensations of exhilaration and despair. Yonas had captured two tree kangaroos - but they had been eaten. All that he had brought were pieces of skin and bones!
Nonetheless, the remains were sufficient to confirm that the black and white tree-kangaroo was a very curious and hitherto unknown animal. The skins were incomplete and miserably torn, but it was clear from them that the new species was a largish creature (we learned later that females, which are smaller than males, weigh 9-10kg). The back was indeed black, the belly white, and the tail patterned variously in black and white, but usually with a white tip.
The face was very unusual, for a band of white fur surrounded the base of the muzzle, and a white star stood in the centre of the forehead. These features were not evident in the photographs of the joey, and nothing like this pattern is seen in any other marsupial.
The distinctiveness of this strange creature was also apparent from the bones. The skull showed some similarities to that of Doria's tree kangaroo, but was more gracefully shaped and differed in details of its teeth and foramina (holes in the skull).
The limb bones were also dramatically different from those of any other tree kangaroo I had examined. The major limb bones of tree kangaroos are exceptionally thick and robust. They need to be, for many species leap as much as 20 metres downward from the rainforest canopy. The limb bones of the new species were, in contrast, gracile, and similar in proportion to ground-dwelling kangaroos. Clearly, this animal could not make such great downward leaps.
I would discover eventually that this new species was unique among tree kangaroos in that it spent much of its time on the ground, among the stunted shrubs and bushes of the alpine region.
Meanwhile, our largely unsuccessful hunters had gone off up into the higher country with their dogs once more. Eventually another hunter called Obert brought in our long-desired specimen.
As Obert carried the recently dead creature towards me, seated upright on his shoulders, it looked more like a bear or koala than a kangaroo. It seemed such an adorable, gentle creature. Later, when I encountered a living animal, I would learn that its temperament is indeed mild. The local Lani hunters have often told me that, when hunters find it, they offer it some choice leaves, and it approaches them - then they simply slip a noose over its head and lead it away.
This extraordinary animal is well known to hunters living high on the Maokop. The Moni people, who inhabit the western edge of the range, know it as "dingiso", a name that we eventually bestowed upon it as its English common name. We did this because we were tired of the clumsy, double-barrelled English names (such as Goodfellow's tree kangaroo) given to other species of New Guinea mammal. We wanted to bestow a native name, such as the Aboriginal koala or wombat, which would, in time, become familiar to Western ears.
We also gave the scientific name Dendrolagus mbaiso to the creature. Mbaiso means 'the forbidden animal' in Moni, and we used this name as a tribute to the traditional Moni conservation practices which have been crucial in allowing it to survive to the present.
Dingiso remains common in Moni territory. Many clans revere it as an ancestor and refuse to hunt it. When they meet it in the forest, they say, it throws up its arms and whistles, which they take as an indication that it recognises its shared ancestry with the Moni. Even their dogs, Moni say, recognise the sacred nature of this creature, and when they see one will slink away on their bellies. Biologists, who are a more prosaic bunch than the Moni, view dingiso's behaviour differently, descrying in it a typical tree-kangaroo threat display. They have no explanation, however, for the behaviour of Moni dogs.
The Western Dani know the creature as wanun. In their territories, which lie to the east of the Moni, it is not protected by traditional beliefs and is, as a consequence, extremely rare. It has already been exterminated within a few days' walk of most Dani settlements.
Now I had sufficient evidence to describe the species. With the discovery of dingiso I felt that I had hit the high point in my career as a biologist. During the decade or so I had been investigating the mammals of Melanesia, I had discovered 16 other species that had been unknown to science, as well as 14 new subspecies. Among these were bats, possums, bandicoots, wallabies and giant rats, as well as three other kinds of tree kangaroos.
None, however, was as unusual as dingiso, and none had such an interesting evolutionary and cultural story to tell.
Tim Flannery is director of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, and author of The Weather Makers as well as Throwim Way Leg, from which this article is extracted.
