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Sulawesi is one of the most biologically distinctive islands in the world.
Its long isolation as an island — it has never been connected to the Asian or Australian continental shelves — has produced a fauna and flora with high rates of endemism: species found nowhere else on Earth.
The babirusa — the strange deer-pig whose males grow tusks that curve back and nearly pierce their own skulls — is endemic to Sulawesi.
The anoa — two species of small buffalo that evolved on the island — is endemic.
The Sulawesi warty pig, depicted in what may be the world’s oldest cave painting, is endemic.