Guys I'm not dead I promise, Yes it has been 2 months but college has been taking me by storm. ITS SO INTERESTING I LOVE ANIMALS. So today is a pretty cool subject, but first I want to explain what the word endemic means. Endemic is a word that is used in terms of an animal or plant species that only lives in one particular area/region/country. Today's animal is endemic to the one and only island of Madagascar, which is the capital of the world for most amount of endemic species. This means Madagascar may be the most unique country species wise for both flora and fauna.
As much as I like to move it move it, these guys do it better. Lemurs are so cool and interesting, but also very weird. The little guy on the left is a Ring-Tailed lemur, the most commonly known lemur in the world. Not all lemurs look like him though, each species has its own unique look like red ruffed lemurs colour of a rusty red/orange colour to the largest species, the Indri which in my opinion makes one of the coolest/ most beautiful calls in the animal kingdom and the weird creepy moster under your bed looking aye-aye, which we will definitely discuss later.
Lemurs (lemuridae) are considered omnivorous due to their dentition, having a dentition formula similar to ours. But lemurs like to focus on a more herbivorous diet usually, they love fruit and sometimes feed on insects should they be available. Madagascar as a region is slowly regenerating its forests due to rapid deforestation in the past, many tree planting plots have been placed across the country for sustainable logging. Lemurs play an interesting role in natural reforestation by eating their favourite foods! Fruits are eaten that have seeds in them, the seed coating stops the seed from being digested and is then passed out the other way, over many generations of lemurs seeds will be dispersed throughout forests and forest borders due to animal roaming within a habitat. This is pretty cool in my opinion anyways, it shows that an ecosystem can regenerate and replenish slowly without human interaction. But obviously awareness and action on our part speeds up the process. So don't just leave it to the animals!!
Indris are the largest species of Lemur on Madagascar (6-9.5kg) , unfortunately these guys are critically endangered and only live in the North-eastern part of Madagascar. Indris have no tail, bipedal most times, versatile fingers with nails instead of claws, so you're probably thinking "ape???" NOOO. Lemurs are indeed primates however the lemur family had evolved away from apes and monkeys 65 million years ago just after the dinosaurs kicked the bucket. Indris live in small families of a breeding pair and their offspring, and sing to each other in the forest to know where each other are. As I mentioned earlier these guys have such a beautiful call so please go look it up but heres an idea over words, NNNIIIIIIIIOOOOOUUUUU
Ew what is that thing on the right doing in my blog ?? It's hideous!
It's an Aye-aye. Remember? the monster that hides under your bed looking thing? yeah this is it. These guys are nocturnal and only come out at night, their big mickey mouse looking ears are used as big radars picking up any movements in the night. Their hunting strategy is very interesting. They sit at a tree and listen for movement of grubs and larva in the trees bark and use its weirdly elongated middle finger to tap the wood and disrupt the grub making it move even more! It then digs it out using its beaver like teeth and chows down. Aye ayes are small at only 2.5kg and are endangered on the IUCN list.
So that's it, my return is here after two long months!!
Thanks for reading!!
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Another interesting article Daragh, looking forward to Part 4!