Spectacular Creatures

a photo essay zooming in on the hidden and overlooked lives of South Thailand's jungles

created with the support of ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity

Tales passed down from our ancestors tell of an oasis where live an abundance of fantastical creatures unseen. Some as bright as the colours of the sea. Some never to be spotted under the sun. Some that take cover under slabs and stones. Some that blend in with the grainy sand. Some walk with no legs. Some glide with webbed feet. Some climb vertically or sleep upside down. Some grip with minuscule hairs or little limbs. Some see with four pairs of eyes. Some see heat and vibration. Some possess night vision while some glow in the dark. Some bud. Some blossom. Some seed. Some conceive. Some raise their young till they’re grown. Some leave them, while others eat them.

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Tales we tell of phoenixes and unicorns, mythical beings from our wildest imaginations, long grazed upon the pages of our sci-fi and folklore. But these fabled creatures, in truth, are real. And right now, they roam the same place on which we reside, a planet called earth — in fact, in more numbers and kinds than we’ll ever count or discover.

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Here is a fraction of this life, in the dense jungles of South Thailand’s Khao Sok National Park:

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