Boring Name but Cute Nonetheless

Allow me to introduce the common brown lemur. And since we have talked about lemurs before let me skip the old stuff and just mention what makes these "common" primates uncommon.

Well, for one thing they all look alike. The males and females look and weigh pretty much the same. That is rare for lemurs or any primate for that matter.

These are no night lemurs. They spend their days scouring the trees for food. But sometimes they do stay up late and hunt around in the night too especially when the moon is full. (Vampire lemurs perhaps?)

And what do they eat? Mostly fruit, but they won't turn down a tasty cicada or millipede if their 5-fingered hands find some (Oh come on, like you've never wanted to eat a millipede). They even nibble on dirt occasionally to get some extra minerals.

A lot of the plants the eat are full of nasty toxic chemicals that would kill many other animals. But common brown lemurs, and some other lemurs, have evolved to be able to handle all the poisons. That means they can eat the juicy leaves that others animals have to leave behind. Smart, eh?

There are not a lot of these medium-sized lemurs flying about the treetops, so they are considered near threatened. Their families have about 9-12 members, but no one seems to be in charge (try that with a human family of 9-12 and see what happens). And their families don't grow very fast. A mature female will only have one baby a year. There have been a few cases of twins too.

All these photos are from a wonderful little weekend away my wife and I just spent near Andasibe. We were lucky enough to lots of wonderful creatures besides these lemurs. I will put up a new post each day this week to show you everything from spiders to geckos.

Come back tomorrow and see whose next.