LEAPING LEMURS!

Guess - Am I a boy or a girl?
© 2007 Wildlife Conservation Society

Did you know that there are more than 100 species of land-dwelling mammals native to Madagascar - and not a single one is found anywhere else on Earth? Only here can you find a web-toed tenrec swimming through the water, see an aye-aye fishing a grub from a hole with its long middle finger, or watch a fossa hunting lemurs in a forest of baobab trees.

In this section you'll learn some reasons the primates on Madagascar so special. Then you're going to act as a lemur researcher, analyzing genetic data and helping conservationists to create a series of reserves to best preserve the diversity of lemurs so their population can continue to thrive into the future.

PACKED WITH PRIMITIVE PRIMATES

One reason Madagascar is so fascinating to scientists is its wide diversity of unique primates. The lemurs of Madagascar look very different from monkeys, apes, humans, and other primates. All the animals below are primates - mouse over them to see the characteristics they share with one another.

Malagasy primates have retained a large number of primitive characteristics, features that we might find in the common ancestor of the wide diversity of primates that we now find on Earth (including us). All the primates found in Madagascar are in a group called the Strepsirrhini, which means they have glands in their noses that keep them wet, like dogs' noses. Monkeys, apes and people are in a group called the Haplorrhini.

Animals that retain lots of primitive evolutionary characteristics are called basal taxa, and can provide important information about how populations of organisms have changed over time. In a cladogram, these groups of animals have branches that meet the main tree closer to the base.

Look at the primates below and put them into the cladogram. The animals with branches closest to the bottom of the tree are basal taxa and generally have more primitive characteristics. As you move up the cladogram, you will see animals with shared derived characteristics (like the prehensile tail of New World Monkeys).

Primate Cladogram