Baska

Baska: Bewitched by Batagur The Malay peninsula plus Sarawak on Borneo are the home to two species of Batagur: B. affinis (both subspecies: B. a. affinis and B. a. edwardmolli ) and B. borneoensis ( Iverson, 1992 ). These two species coexist in some rivers while vast differences in mating and nesting isolate the species from interbreeding. They have both been reported as existing with Sonneratia  spp of Mangrove Apple trees ( Guntoro, 2012a , Holloway, 2003 ), the fruit of which was long-thought to be a staple of the species. The Malay names for Batagur species is "Tuntung," an onomatopoeic name that either reflects the drumming sound produced by females as they drop their plastron onto the sand to disguise their nest after depositing the eggs (Moll, 1978) or the sound of the eggs exiting the cloaca and dropping onto the other eggs ( Guntoro, 2012 b). Use of this as a name reflects the most visible time for the species as they historically nested communally, sometime