Crab

Geosesarma perraccae at a location that will not be disclosed. This is a small land crab about 3-4 cm in carapace width. At the edge of streams close to this little fellow, beneath the dank leaf litter, dwell another miniscule species, Johora singaporensis, that is endemic to Singapore and found only in streams in Bukit Batok Nature Park (now likely extinct there) and Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Together with Johnson's Freshwater Crab (Irmengardia johnsoni) and the Swamp Forest Crab (Parathelphusa reticulata), which are also found only in Singapore, these tiny, overlooked crustaceans offer a reminder of the wealth and fragility of this island's biodiversity, a resource to mankind's library of knowledge and silent plea for more thoughtful stewardship of this land.

"... I obtained no less than 700 species of beetles, a large proportion of which were quite new, and amongh them were 130 distinct kinds of the elegant Longicorns (Cerambycidae), so much esteemed by collectors. Almost all these were collected in one patch of jungle, not more than a square mile in extent, and in all my subsequent travels in the East I rarely if ever met with so productive a spot."

– Alfred Russel Wallace on Singapore's Bukit Timah Hill, in The Malay Archipelago

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[wallace's monkey]

i <3 wallace