Endangered Animals

Aye-Aye: The Night Gremlin

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We can’t have a month dedicated to Madagascar without mentioning the animal that, in my opinion, encapsulates all that is weird, wacky and wonderful about Madagascan wildlife: the aye-aye. The largest nocturnal primate in the world, the aye-aye is by far the most specialised, unusual, and evolutionary distinct offshoot of the lemur family tree. Its jumble of quirky physical features baffled taxonomists for years, and even today it is viewed by many people as an incarnation of an evil spirit.

Sifaka: Life in the Thorns

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One of Madagascar’s most peculiar habitats can be found on the southwestern edge of the island. Strange spiny forests cover an area slightly larger than Wales – and it can only be described as a botanical wonderland. As the name suggests, spines are everywhere in this environment. There are huge, thorn-covered trees and strange, almost otherworldly-looking plants called Didierea, which are several metres tall and wave spiky arms towards the sky. This place looks like what a filmmaker might imagine an alien landscape to look like.

A Madagascan Miscellany

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For the whole of October, The Nature Nook has been looking at Madagascan wildlife. We’ve already looked at lemurs, fossas, tenrecs, and the smallest reptile in the world, among others – but the end of the month is rapidly approaching and we still have many more weird and wonderful Madagascan creatures to cover. So today we are posting a ‘Madagascan Miscellany’ – a list of eight strange animals that live on this great island, from a chameleon that only lives for five months to an ant that sucks the blood of its own larvae…

Fossa: The Mysterious Madagascan ‘Mongoose’

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The fossa is Madagascar’s top dog. Not that it’s actually a dog, of course, because Madagascar doesn’t have any wild dogs. Nor does it have any wild cats, bears, badgers, weasels or raccoons. In their absence, the top predator on the island is an elusive, medium-sized brown animal that looks a bit like a cross between an elongated puma and a giant otter.

Indri: Father of the Forest

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There are more than 110 different species of lemur alive on Madagascar today and they encompass a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and behaviours. At one extreme is the tiny Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur. At a mere 92 mm in length and weighing just 31 grams, it is not only the smallest lemur in the world (it can sit, quite comfortably, in an egg cup) but it’s also the smallest primate.

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