MALAYAN SUBREGION. In zoi)geog raphy, a faunal district of the Oriental region (q.v.), comprising the Malay Peninsula south of Tenasserim, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and all the archipelago west and north of Lombok and Celebes, as far as and including the Philippines. It intercalates with the Indian and Chinese sub regions along the eastern coast of the Pay of Bengal, and is known in some books as 'Indo Malayan.' Its southeastern boundary (Wallace's line). at the Straits of Macassar. is curiously distinct from that of the Australian region. al though) the two are separated only by narrow waters. An explanation of this will he found in the article DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS, illUstrated by maps. This is almost entirely a region of tropical and forested islands, and its animals are those most typical of the Oriental fauna—that is, organisms suited to uniform but not ex treme heat. plenty of moisture. and approximate
ly uniform meteoroloeieal conditions throughout the year. One result of this is an interesting similarity between its faunal characteristics and those of equatorial Africa on the one side and of the Amazonian region on the other. The tapirs and trogons of South America. and the African anthropoid apes and hornbills. are curi ously paralleled by similar Malayan species ab sent elsewhere. A noteworthy resemblance also exists between the Malayan and Malagasy re gions. Two very conspicuous groups exclusively found in this subregion are the birds of paradise and the urang-utan—the last recalling the fact that Java was the in que of Pithecanthropus which, with other considerations, has led nanny to believe that mankind de velop•d its species in this part of the world. See BEGtox.