#1 Lemurs are only found wild in Madagascar The island of Madagascar is the only country in the entire world where lemurs occur naturally. Only two species of lemurs, the brown lemur, and the Mongoz lemur, were trafficked to the Comoros by humans and have successfully settled there. Many species of lemurs are not even found in zoos today, but …
LesenSchlagwort-Archiv: critically endangered
Little Pearls of the South: Spider Tortoises
Tortoises are popular, both in Madagascar and all over the world. And yet these reptiles on the red island are massively threatened. One of them is the Spider Tortoise (Pyxis arachnoides), named after the beautiful, web-like pattern of its dorsal shell. The older Spider Tortoises get, however, the more the pretty pattern disappears. Really old animals – it is assumed …
Lesen10 good reasons to travel to Madagascar
#1 Baobabs: Madagascar’s legendary Baobab Alley is located in the west of the island. The mighty trees with their impressive silhouettes are famous all over the world. On Madagascar there are seven different species of Baobabs, on earth, there are only eight species in total. Discover the Baobab forests of Andavadoaka and visit the “Mother of the forest” in Tsimanampetsotsa! …
LesenMysterious and nocturnal: The Votsotsa
A very special inhabitant of Madagascar is the Votsotsa. It looks like a mixture of a rabbit, a kangaroo, and a rat. Big ears, cute black button eyes, a partly jumping locomotion, and a hardly hairy, narrow tail. In fact, the Votsotsa belongs to the Madagascar rats, a separate genus that only lives in Madagascar. It is the largest rodent …
LesenThe real treasures of Madagascar
An arched, golden shell, relatively long legs and alert, black, shining eyes: That is how the most precious tortoise on Earth looks like. It comes from Madagascar and is named ploughshare tortoise (Astrochelys yniphora) due to the large bony appendage on its breast shell. It serves males to turn over contrahents or females during mating season. And this is quite …
LesenThe fruit gourmets: Black-and-white Ruffed Lemurs
Many people know them from zoos and animal parks: Black-and-white ruffed lemurs (Varecia variegata). Besides Red Ruffed Lemurs and the Indri, they belong to the largest lemurs with a head-torso length of 40 to 60 cm, an additional 60 cm added for the tail. Weights of 3 to 4 kg are the average. Black-and-white ruffed lemurs exclusively live in the …
LesenThe rarest lemur on Earth: Perrier’s Sifaka
Practically the counterpart to the white Silky Sifaka is the closely related Black Sifaka or Perrier’s Sifaka (Propithecus perrieri). With a height of 85 to 92 cm and a weight of three to six kilograms, it belongs to the larger lemurs, with the tail accounting for up to 46 cm of its total length. Suitably to the name these animals …
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