There are 40 different kinds of animals scattered throughout the archipelago and 115 state-supervised game parks and nature reserves. Also, if you can handle the karma, many hunting areas. Bird species number in the thousands: peacocks, pheasants, partridges, turkey-sized pigeons, jungle fowls which incubate their eggs in volcanic steam, black ibis flying in V-formations, and the hornbill which sounds like a puffing locomotive when it flies. There are fabulously colored butterflies, praying mantises like bright green banana leaves, submarine diving grasshoppers. Reptiles include giant monitor lizards, the reticulated python (world's largest snake, 9 m long), deep croaking gekkos. Among its mammals are great apes such as the orangutan with its blazing orange shaggy coat, deep black wild cattle, miniature deer (350 mm high), clouded leapords, mountain goats (serow), wild wart hogs, the sun bear with a large white circle on its chest, long snouted tapirs which gallop like stallions, tossing their heads and whinnying.

The fauna of Irian Jaya (West New Guinea) resembles that of Australia: vividly colored Birds of Paradise, spiny anteaters, mouse-like flying possums, bandicoots. In Indonesia's seas are found the world's most expensive shell (The Glory of the Seas), crabs (birgus) which can clip down coconuts and open them on the ground, fresh-water dolphins, fish that climb mango trees looking for insects. Due to its extreme geographic fragmentation, Indonesia is richer in plant species than either the American or African tropics. Its total number of flowering plants number more than 35,000 species. To cite only a sample of Indonesia's floral wealth, there are 250 species of bamboo, 150 species of palm, and in the more fertile areas flowers are rampant-hibiscus, jasmine, allamanda, frangipani, bougainvillea, lotus lilies I % m wide.

There are 5000 plant species on Java alone and twice as many species of plants on Borneo as in all of Africa. There are tall hardwood rainforesttrees of Irian Jaya which rival the Sequoias of California; banyan trees, connected with authority and populated by hordes of spirits, planted outside the royal cities of Central Java; the Corpse Plant of Sumatra which smells like putrifying animal flesh; the biggest flower in the world, the reflesia (1 meter wide); the luxurious vegetation of Borneo where the seductive colors of orchids glow in the perpetual twilight of the jungle. Because of the unbelievable humidity, strong sunlight and volcanic soil, when you build a fence in Indonesia 6 months later it is not a fence. It is a living wall of vegetation.