EVEN the Minahasan people, who pride themselves on eating bushmeat, call the collection of stalls at Tomohon, in the highlands of North Sulawesi, the “extreme market”. There is certainly something extreme about the serried carcasses, blackened by blow torches to burn off the fur, the faces charred in a rictus grin. The sheer range of species on the slabs is also astonishing: reticulated pythons, warty pigs, flying foxes (a type of fruit bat) and the Sulawesi giant rat (no, it doesn’t taste like chicken). Especially as Christmas and Easter approach, other specimens find their way to the market, including crested macaques and a tree-dwelling marsupial, the adorable Sulawesi bear cuscus.
The pasar extrim speaks to Sulawesi’s striking biogeography. The Indonesian island straddles the boundary between Asiatic and Australian species—and boasts an extraordinary number of species found nowhere else. But the market also symbolises how Asia’s amazing biodiversity is under...Continue reading
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