Dancing Lemurs

People travel to Madagascar for a variety of reasons, one of which is to witness the island's native lemur species. After their leisurely habits and nocturnal nature, their name originates from the Roman word lemures, which means "ghosts." While Madagascar has approximately 100 species of lemurs, Verreaux's Sifaka Lemur, also known as the dancing lemur, is one of the most well-known. Their bodies are white, with black faces, webbed hands and feet, and long tails. Its moniker comes from the fact that it spends most of its time in the trees and the only method it knows to get around on the ground is by leaping.

Lemurs play an important role in Madagascar's biodiversity. This is one of the things about Madagascar you should know. Lemurs are members of the prosimians family of primates, which were originally widely dispersed but have now been mainly displaced by monkeys. Lemurs have only able to survive and thrive due of Madagascar's isolation. Scientists currently identify roughly 60 different species of lemurs, a number that has risen in recent years as a result of the discovery of many new species, including two this year. Despite these discoveries, Madagascar's lemur diversity is much lower than it was when humans first arrived on the island some 2000 years ago. Since then, the island's major lemur species have been hunted to extinction, and habitat degradation has been exacerbated by climate change and human activity (especially land-clearing with fire).