Written by Anne Davies   

A recent news report from the jungles of Sumatra in Indonesia tells the frightening saga of five men who spent three days trapped in trees while tigers prowled around on the ground below them. The men, who were searching for a rare kind of wood in the dense forest, had inadvertently caught a tiger cub in a trap they had put out to snare morsels more benign than tiger meat. Tigers are not amenable to discussion and negotiation. They went berserk when they found the cub dead of its injuries, grabbed one of the hunters and devoured him on the spot. The other five managed to scramble up nearby trees to relative safety.

This sounds like a paleolithic story—hunter-gatherers struggling against wild beasts for food and turf, although Paleolithic man was searching for basic sustenance, not esoteric components for aromatic oils and incense. Human development has steadily encroached on the tigers’ natural habitat in Sumatra, driving them further into the jungle area of Gunung Leuser National Park, another example of rainforest decimation across the globe. What sets this story apart is the intervention of modern technology in this most primitive milieu.

Up in their trees, without food, water, or protection from the elements--the building blocks of human survival--these latter day hunter gatherers had a fallback miracle in their pockets--cell phones that enabled them to call their fellow villagers and tell them that they were literally up a tree with no means of escaping the infuriated animals thrashing around below, waiting for one of them to fall from his uncertain perch. We have no way of knowing how advanced their cell phones are; they may have been able to access the Internet or check their email while waiting for deliverance, an amenity not available to their Paleolithic ancestors.

Terriified by the tigers, the villagers couldn’t get near the men in the trees and had to turn the rescue operation over to officials with motorized equipment and guns. After three days the rescue team managed to scare the tigers away and bring the men down from their sanctuary-prison. They were weak but unharmed , though doubtless traumatized by the horror of their comrade’s death and fear that the same fate awaited them.

I’m intrigued by this convergence of Stone Age habitat and 21st century technology. I’m amazed that present day hunter-gatherers still venture into a jungle where wild beasts dine indiscriminately on raw meat, animal or human. Perhaps they didn’t realize they might encounter tigers, which are known to be voracious even when not riled up. The newspaper accounts of this event don’t indicate whether these indigenous people carried conventional weapons like guns and spears.. We know only that they achieved salvation by cell phone.

The world has such wonderful technology, even indigenous peoples know how to utilize it to save their lives. Is it overly optimistic to hope that the highly educated individuals on our planet could use advanced communications technology to save us from nuclear tigers that are out there ready to pounce and show no sign of going away any time soon?