The Animals of South Thailand

As you can imagine (or you will know if you've been there) South Thailand sits very close to the equator so there's a lot of equatorial forest. This means life thrives in every corner aswell as the rich seas off the Andaman Coast. For a nature lover with a camera it was a joy to experience the creatures of the region albeit, captive, itinerant, working and wild ones I encountered along the way.

Working Animals

There are a number of hard working animals employed in the service of humans. The most striking of these are the elephants. Previously used as diggers / tractors involved in heavy logging work and sometimes addicted to amphetamines to make them work harder, the custom was outlawed and the question was what to do with all these elephants. They could not return to the wild.

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• An old Elephant lives out it's days giving daily rides to tourists and gets to eat as many bananas as the tourists will buy for them. This one almost certainly was a logging elephant in it's former life and from the pink skin around it's face, looked about somewhere between 50 and 60 years old. Such a magnificent and gentle old person.

Many of them now take tourists for rides in the forest and although they are still working animals, they often have a better lifestyle and are looked after. This is not always the case and I did see some Elephants chained up looking very frustrated and left on their own which was incredibly sad to see.

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• This Elephant, also an elder person had a clever way of taking a rest by propping up it's heavy old trunk against a step in the path. I felt for this old creature for I had never seen such behaviour. It really should have been living out it's days in peaceful trnaquility. The irony being that these elephants would probably not reach quite as old an age in the wild.

I saw fishing birds, trained to catch for their owners from birth in a small remote village built on stilts in a river estuary among Mangrove forests and was lucky to see one of my all time favourite fish in it's natural environment for the first time. Muddy the Mudskippers on a mud flat in Bang Pat.

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When you spend enough time with an Elephant, they become very human n spite of their huge size, they begin to seem like people. Perhaps more so than any other animal I have encountered except perhaps dogs and apes / monkeys.

• This photo composite of a graffitti girl from Phuket & Bok the Elephant I spent some time bathing with in a lake, attempts to convey the feeling I got of the person inside. She was a 40 old female and I felt a connection to her. It was like she knew I liked her and she didn't mind that. I felt quite honoured. (no EXIF data - composited Photoshop)

Coconut Monkeys

These monkeys work hard for a living and if they were not particularly well treated they would probably not work at all. They are used as coconut pickers for they are light, nimble, fast workers, adept and obviously quite cheap to employ.

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I was lucky to see them at the end of a hard day on the back of the truck with a full load of their day's work. I admire these noble creatures and again have mixed feelings about their fate, caught up in human life.

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Itinerant Animals

There are plenty of these, most notably the Temple Macaques we visited in Khao Sok National Park. They happily take food from strangers. There's even a kiosk selling peanuts to tempt them out from the old temple ruins.

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It seems sad that they've become dependent on people for a living but they are wild, they seemed to be thriving and one wonders what happens to their wild nature over generations of time.

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I also encountered legions of semi wild fish, who used to being fed by tourists throng in huge shoals by the piers on the river. Thousands of elegant Carp literally more bodies than water gather daily for their free bounty.

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Wild Animals

There are plenty of wild animals including a wonderful array of playful Hermit, Bubbler and Ghost Crabs who own the beaches. Then there are endless and exotic birds, snakes, frogs and lizards. Insects hop around everywhere and many type of industrious ants from pinhead size to rather larger than we see in the UK constantly patrol the gardens and forest paths in search of the next 22 meals.

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• This very large hairy legged (land) crab lived under a tree behind the beach on the beautiful Island of Koh Tachai which was so beautiful it was at serious threat of being destroyed by the thousands of eager tourists visiting each day to it's tiny golden beaches with the bluest water surrounded by coral reefs. The government intervened and have indefinitely closed the island to tourists.

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• A sleepy frog curled up under a leaf for the day out of the heat of the sun. It would always be gone by sundown but would return to the exact same place each morning. At night I could hear the chorus of thousands of frogs all calling out to each other in the black of the night. It was a deep thrum in the distance and gentle enough to lull me to sleep. 1

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• I've always loved crabs, being my sun sign it's hard not to. One of the first things to crawl out of the sea, they mostly comb the beach for detritus running back to their holes at the first sign of danger. Except the sociable and charismatic hermit crabs who party on the beach, swapping shells before disappearing into their shells when startled.

Animals as Food

The amount of animals I saw prepared for food was quite astonishing and far outweighed the limited, sanitised versions of animal portions of meat and fish we are used to in Supermarkets back home. In the local markets, fish defying description whole or chopped up, raw or cooked on the spot to be eaten right away.

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• A Horseshoe crab, one of nature's ultimate survivors. A primitive creature it remains unchanged for almost 445 million years, which makes them living fossils and twice the age of the oldest Dinosaur. Here being grilled with some plump fish at Takua Pa market, north of Khao Lak.

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• Assorted fish for sale. There's no by-catch here. Just whatever the fishermen caught in his nets this morning and it's all $1 each. There are some beautiful specimens here and I'm not sure which ones would taste good and which ones would be chewy.

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• This impressive predator would have been happily hunting in the shallows, darting around at high speed and taking it's prey by surprise until it was itself caught, probably by line and bait to be brought to the market and sold whole to a hungry family.

technical

They say never work with children and animals. It's mostly because they don't sit still for long, take instructions and get bored easily. It's better to give them something to eat. That way you have a chance. With animals it's all about opportunity, patience and sometime waiting.. for a crab to come out of a hole, for 20 minutes ! Animals are a great study as they do what they want. If they're dead, they are easy to shoot and become abstract, strange and can be grotesque. I found in Thailand the strong sun and humidity were against me. It wasn't always easy to get the angles and I couldn't carry much kit. It was a challenge. The coconut monkeys were going past in a truck. Our driver tried to get close enough to catch these shots while we were also moving. At the beach there's always a worry sand could kill the camera and saltwater is death to electronics. Other than that you take each shot as it comes. Photographing the Temple Monkeys at Khao Sok National Park was the most fun as they would allow you to get really close, but make sure you have hold of the strap as they will take a camera, a lens cap or anything else gadgety that takes their fancy. Going down the river in a kayak also got some good angles but more of the landscape than the wildlife. We did see a couple of snakes sleeping in the trees but they were difficult enough to see let alone photograph. One tip I do have. Shooting under the canopy means racking up the ISO. You can't use a slow shutter speed as animals have a tendency to move but you can experiment with your aperture.

All images copyright Christos Hatjoullis (Outerground)