First of all, sorry about the flurry of broken link posts that were sent out yesterday at about 6PM. I was updating my site and messing with a few things and, well, you saw what happened. From now on, I’m going to deactivate my subscribers list when I’m doing maintenance. Please don’t unsubscribe. I promise, it won’t happen again… I think.

As for the post — just a few kids playing down by the river with an elephant. Apparently, that’s okay in Sumatra. Actually, the kids are children of the elephant handlers and to them, the elephants are pets that they grow up with.

A spectral tarsier mother and baby in Tangkoko National Park on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.

Here’s a young black-crested macaque with jazz hands. I’ve posted quite a few of these guys before. Their range is restricted to the northern tip of the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.

Too many non-animal, Italian landscape shots in a row. Here’s a nice moment between two orangutans to break things up a bit.

Here’s another shot of a dwarf cuscus from Sulawesi in Indonesia. Not much bigger than a squirrel, these animals are marsupials and the largest member of the possum family. When first discovered, the cuscus was thought to be a monkey because of the way it moves through the trees with its prehensile tail.

When it wasn’t raining in Sumatra, which was rare, there were tons of butterflies along the river. Here, a couple of different species were flying around together. The one on the right is called a Lesser Jay while the one on the left is a Malayan zebra.

This is the one guy you don’t want to mess with. He ‘s the dominant male orangutan at Camp Leakey in Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesian Borneo. When he appeared out of the forest after being gone for a few weeks, the other males ran, the females vied for his attention, and the humans that worked in the area all got a little nervous.

I spent a couple of hours with the black-crested macaques as they moved through the forest. The little ones, like this guy, were curious at first, but before long forgot I was there.

I usually don’t post on Saturday but I’m testing out a few things on the blog. Apparently a lot of gmail, yahoo and hotmail subscribers aren’t receiving posts. Hopefully this goes through. Another agile gibbon from Borneo. This one really shows just how long these guy’s arms are.

They start the training early to be an elephant handler in Sumatra. These kids are born into the business and grow up with the young elephants. I’m usually not a trained/domesticated animal guy, but as I mentioned earlier, there definitely seems to be a strong relationship and respect between the people of Tangkahan and their elephants.