MS Features: Surgeon Dr Francis Seow-Choen who discovered over 250 new species of stick insects
Dr Francis Seow-Choen was dressed in a formal shirt and tie when we met in his home.
The well-spoken bespectacled 67-year-old has been a major figure in Singapore’s colorectal surgery scene since the late 80s.
The former Head of the Department of Colorectal Surgery at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) travels all around the world for medical lectures and demonstrations.
Yet on a cloudy Monday afternoon, the world-class surgeon carved out some time to share his greatest passion — stick insects.
It all began with insect dropping tea
Leading us through the picturesque garden beside his house, Francis welcomed us into a small shed.
With the biggest grin on his face, he opened one of the many black cages inside the shed and pulled out a green stick insect even longer than his hand.
The insect’s six legs, each lined with spines, hooked onto his sleeves and skin as it made a leisurely trek up his forearm.
How did Francis — who has discovered more than 250 new species of stick insects — get to this point?
His love of animals began in childhood when he kept stick insects as pets.
As a child, he grew up among the creatures as the older folks would collect the faeces of a particular species of stick insect to brew tea with.
“The insects were fed on guava,” he said. They concentrated the Vitamin E they ingested into their droppings, resulting in a nice guava tea. Supposedly, that is.
Other than insects, Francis held a fascination for reptiles of all kinds, snakes included.
His love for animals had him dreaming of becoming a zookeeper when he grew up.
Though Francis initially aimed for veterinary medicine, such a path didn’t pan out and he ended up picking medicine for humans instead.
Doctor became Head of Department of Colorectal Surgery in SGH
Francis graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 1981. In 1987, he obtained his higher surgical qualifications.
He told MS News that the Permanent Secretary of Health at the time, Dr Kwa Soon Bee, was sub-specialising medicine into specific fields during this period.
Francis ended up sub-specialising in colorectal surgery, which deals with the colon and rectum of the large intestine.
“Nobody wanted to join,” said the surgeon, who became the Head of the first Department of Colorectal Surgery in Asia in 1994. Other doctors wanted to work on less ‘niche’ parts of the body like the head or thyroid.
For Francis though, the niche only seems to draw him in — as he returned to his childhood stick insect hobby after completing his medical studies.
Surgeon rediscovers love for stick insects
Sometime around 1987 to 1989, Francis learnt that there were actually wild stick insects in Singapore and Malaysia.
The curious surgeon looked for information on these local phasmids, an insect order including stick and leaf insects, but found nothing.
He then visited the NUS Department of Zoology, where a Professor Dennis Hugh Murphy encouraged him to start his research into the topic.
Source: NUS
“If you want to do something, do it properly,” said Francis about the situation.
He went into Singapore’s forests for his investigations and started finding stick insects that had never been described before.
After several years, he had enough data to write ‘A Guide to the Stick & Leaf Insects of Singapore’, published by the Singapore Science Centre in 1995.
Francis held up the small, thin, green book proudly. That was where it all began, a tiny prologue compared to the behemoths he would soon create.
Surgeon suffered concussion while searching for stick insects in Hong Kong
It became the norm for Francis to dive into Singapore’s forests at night — as this was when the elusive stick insects tend to be more active.
“When I first started, NParks didn’t have so many rules,” he said about his nighttime trips into the forests. The National Parks Board currently closes its nature reserves at 7pm.
Though it may seem scary walking around alone at night to most people, Francis always followed the paths and said Singapore is quite safe.
Source: NParks, for illustration purposes only
However, the same didn’t apply to his insect-searching trip in Hong Kong.
Francis recalled that he was once invited to the city to give some lectures at a colorectal conference.
The day before, he scouted out a path at Victoria Peak, the tallest hill on Hong Kong Island.
Source: Daniel Case on Wikimedia Commons
That night, he headed out to look for insects there. His host urged him to take a junior doctor with him since it was his first search in Hong Kong.
The junior doctor drove him there but got unnerved by how dark it was. Seeing that he was scared, Francis told the man to go back and proceeded up the path alone.
As he trekked through the darkness of Victoria Peak, the surgeon came across a “huge rock” over 1.5 metres in height with a stick insect on top.
Unable to resist such a find, Francis clambered onto the boulder after it and promptly fell off.
The next thing he knew, he woke up with severe pain in his body and no memory of which country he was in.
What his dazed mind did still recall was that he was there to find insects, and so the doctor just continued his search on Victoria Peak for two hours.
Deducing his way ‘home’ while injured
Eventually, the pain worsened, and that was when Francis decided to call it quits.
“It’s really hurting a lot, I think I should go back home…but where is my home?” recalled Francis as he laughed good-humouredly.
He knew that he was overseas, as his surroundings didn’t look like Singapore.
As such, Francis then deduced that he had to be staying at a hotel, which would include a hotel key.
Sure enough, he found a key on his person with the name of the hotel and finally recalled that he was in Hong Kong.
After leaving Victoria Peak, he received help from a couple who lived in a nearby condo.
The next morning, a doctor at a hospital assessed him with a fractured rib and bruising, alongside his concussion.
“I still gave my lecture so everything was okay,” he said with a big grin on his face.
Risked Sumatra’s tigers & bears in overnight mountain trip
His adventures did not stop there — Francis’ eyes twinkled as he told us about an overnight trip up Mount Leuser in Aceh.
He and his guide set off at 6pm but after walking for a long while, his guide stopped him.
It turned out that his guide was exhausted from planting rice all day, so Francis agreed to let him take a break. The guide promised to come look for him later.
As such, Francis climbed up the path by himself, in an environment known to have tigers and bears.
He waited and waited while on his wildlife search, yet saw no sign of his guide even as hours passed through the night.
“I was all alone. I had no food, no water, no tent. So at 6am, I decided to just lie down […] on the mountain path,” recalled Francis.
Bees and mosquitoes swarmed around him constantly, only serving to build his frustration even more.
The guide eventually showed up at 8am, sheepishly apologising for having fallen asleep.
Singapore’s only colorectal surgeon to discover over 250 new species of stick insects
Even with such mishaps, Francis continued to brave the darkness and wilderness for his passion.
He had wandered lost in pitch darkness for four hours in a Sarawak forest and encountered a tiger in a Thai national park.
However, his trips didn’t just yield dramatic misadventures.
After discovering and describing Singapore’s stick insects, he did the same for Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and Peninsular Malaysia after that.
All of the data from the hardworking surgeon emerged in the form of 11 books on stick insects, thick as bricks and probably just as heavy too.
They cover all known phasmid species in each location, including over 250 new ones described by Francis.
The de-facto local stick insect expert kept some of his favourite species in his small shed. He also stored many dead specimens for study and reference.
All the stick insects in Singapore, I’ve found.
His comprehensive efforts led to him being made a Research Fellow for the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.
Yet nature proved to still hold surprises even for him.
Francis told us that about five years ago, he was walking in Nee Soon Swamp Forest when he suddenly spotted a brand new species of stick insect that he had never seen before.
He coined it Planososibia tommykohi, after the Singaporean diplomat Professor Tommy Koh — who had helped him alot in his stick insect journey.
Francis has also named an entire stick insect genus after Singapore, called Singaporoidea.
Published latest guide on all of Singapore’s land snakes
After having found all the local stick insects, Francis took an interest in snakes over the Covid-19 pandemic.
He managed to publish a large guide on them at the end of last year, coincidentally ushering in the Year of the Snake as well.
Snakes don’t have the best reputation in Singapore, which Francis attributed to people fearing what they didn’t understand.
According to him, snakes tended to be defensive and would never chase and attack humans unless provoked first.
Even an animal like the king cobra would rather flee from a person than fight.
Image courtesy of Francis Seow-Choen
To write his book, Francis had many close encounters with Singapore’s snakes while searching for them, yet never had any issue.
Due to this, he felt that the public needed more education on local wildlife.
What’s so similar about stick insects & colorectal surgery?
In the end, Francis’ passion for animals of all kinds was simply too massive to fit into a single afternoon’s conversation.
As rain began pouring down, I pondered over his life story and dramatic wildlife searches. Stick insects and colorectal surgery — these two fields seemed like they couldn’t be more different.
Yet Francis disagreed on this opinion with a smile on his face.
When it came to animals, he explained, people always focused on larger, popular ones like elephants and pandas.
Smaller animals like stick insects lingered outside the spotlight with fewer experts despite equal importance to the ecosystem.
The same applied to colorectal surgery, a niche medical field back in the 80s which Francis chose to dive into.
He likened the study of large animals and popular medical fields to being a small fish in a big sea, unable to make meaningful waves.
But with phasmids and colorectal surgery, Francis had become a “shark in a small pond”.
Also read: Python slithers into Redhill Market, public captures it using box & stool before NParks’ arrival
Python slithers into Redhill Market, public captures it using box & stool before NParks’ arrival
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Featured image by MS News.
