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A wild macaque dashes across a Singapore road in front of a motorist as members of his troop pick up scraps of food tossed to the monkeys -- which are one of the very few wild mammals still alive in the city state -- by passers-by on Thursday 24 July 2003. The rate of extinctions threatening Southeast Asia could reach catastrophic levels by the end of this century, with Singapore alone having lost nearly half its animal species in the last 200 years, a landmark study warned on Thursday. Based on detailed documentation of the state of mammals, birds, fish and butterflies in the city-state, the study published in the science journal "Nature" found that 28 per cent had vanished. EPA PHOTO/EPA/JONATHAN DRAKE