Are you missing the forest for the tiger?

Three pairs of legs gripped my forefinger. Considering the moth’s body weight, I should barely have felt it. But my nerves were telling the brain a different story, and my fingers twitched involuntarily to shrug the insect off, which was a pity, considering it was the Atlas Moth, the largest species of moth in the world.

This was no Amazonian forest, however, but simply the MTDC resort at Malshej Ghat, just four hours by car from Mumbai. The difference was that I was with a Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) study group, which had experts on all creatures great and small. Otherwise, like most other visitors here, I would have been oblivious to the fact that this is one of the few habitats in the world for the rarely seen Atlas moth.

In the night we set up a ‘light trap’ — a large white screen with a bright lamp to attract nocturnal insects. A variety of moths jostled for space on the screen. But the Atlas was in a league of its own, tawny in colour with a wing span of nearly a foot.

A tiger among insects
With trained naturalists as guides, I saw that observing nature was detective’s work. During the day, a whole new world opened up to me as we wandered off the beaten track into barely discernible trails in the jungle. A leaf, folded at the edge, could be a caterpillar’s temporary shelter. Decaying wood is a haven for mushrooms. The insect world has its own tiger — the praying mantis. And even the mightiest SLR camera will have problems focussing on a giant wood spider’s web, which is nearly transparent and hence ideal for catching flying insects.

I went on three trails with the group. Not once did I see any large mammal that is typically associated with ‘wildlife’. But not once did I get bored, either. I had gone on treks and wildlife safaris before, but never had I been this alert, or ‘looked’ at the jungle the way I was doing now.    

Bharat Deshmukh, who is now an avid birder, can readily empathise with what I felt because he had his own epiphany a few years back when he visited the Nagarhole national park with a bunch of wildlife enthusiasts. “I was the typical Indian tourist. I wanted to see tigers, gaurs, wild elephants — the ‘apex animals’ of the forest. But I was amazed to see that the people in my group and the guide could recognise a bird simply by its call. They could tell whether it was a male or a female, adult or juvenile, and if it was a mating call.” That experience set him on a lifelong quest to know more about birds and derive joy from observing them. Deshmukh says a knowledgeable guide can make a big difference to our appreciation of nature. “Some focus only on the tiger. To earn a tip, they will show you pugmarks, scat or scratches on trees. A good guide, however, will point to the other things he can show you in the jungle, and if a tiger or some other large mammal is spotted in the process, that’s great.”

The mark of a porcupine
Adesh Shivkar, who conducts wildlife tours to parks such as Tadoba and Bandhavgarh, has laid out on his website what tourists can expect. “I make it clear to people that if they have come to see only tigers, then ours is not the right group for them. People should come to the jungle to see both the raja (king) and the praja (subjects),” he says.

The jungle tells many stories, and they are all in plain sight. Tigers or bears aren’t the only animals that leave scratch marks on trees, for instance.

“Deer shed their antlers from time to time, and when a new antler grows, it is covered with a soft skin called ‘velvet’. When the antler has matured, the deer will remove the velvet by rubbing it off against a tree,” points out Shivkar. A porcupine too leaves its own mark when it chews the bark at the base of a tree.

The vegetation in fact holds myriad clues about the teeming activity of life forms. Manoj Sharma, who conducts tours inside Corbett, gives an insight into the mutually beneficial relationship between termites and the sal trees that cover 60% of the national park. “The sal, which is a hard wood tree, provides termites with ample food without itself getting affected. But the thriving population of termites also clear off the soft wood trees in the area, allowing the sal to grow gregariously.” 

Sharma, who used to run a computer hardware business in Delhi, fell in love with Corbett on a backpacking trip and decided to shift there. He initially started off with tiger tours, but gradually shifted his focus towards birds. “Of the 1,300 species of birds in India, 550 can be found in Corbett,” he points out. “Humans are greedy. They want things to follow a plan. But nature is unpredictable. You will come across things you haven't planned for. Like the cocoon of a butterfly. Or the beautiful patterns of white spores on the back of a Silver Fern leaf.”

Eye-opener on conservation
Safari jeeps chasing after a tiger will invariably miss such details, and in the process leave visitors with a poor experience. For Deshmukh, his trips to national parks have been an eye-opener on the need for conservation.

“There is a flowering plant called the lantana which is attractive but it can spread all over the forest and be a menace to other forms of vegetation. A high lantana population could lead to a low deer population (because deer hate lantana), which in turn would impact the tiger.”

In textbooks, we learn that all organisms in an ecosystem are interdependent. In a jungle you see it playing out in action. Everything has a purpose. A bug which has antennae-like parts on its hind side to fool predators shows evolution, a will to survive. Once I started observing such details, I realised how sophisticated, complex and beautiful forests are, and why they’re worth preserving. Sure, a tiger will leave you spellbound, but so can a humble moth. 

When I returned from Malshej, everyone was curious about the Atlas moth, especially those who knew of my dislike for insects. “Really, you held it?” they asked. “No,” I replied, “The moth held me.”