The Mysterious World of Lemurs – Madagascar's Primates: Madagascar's Primates

Author: Liu Shuoliang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: This book takes readers into a rare and unseen world of the heart through 160 intimate and natural photographs, into a secret realm of play, affection, and competition. In those magical moments, lemurs become dancers, performing acrobatic feats with difficulty. Seeing these records of light and shadow, readers will surely be filled with excitement. So, please join us in learning about lemurs. The lemur archive at the end of the book reveals the mystery of lemur origins, provides information about lemur behavior, and summarizes the severe situation of the forests in Madagascar in charts. Unfortunately, lemurs are ranked on the list of endangered animals in the world. Lemurs are truly animals that have survived from prehistoric times. Nearly 40 million years ago, lemurs found refuge in Madagascar. As the common ancestor of humans and monkeys, this primate belongs to the suborder Lemuriformes. In the history of animal evolution, the suborder Lemuriformes is likely a link between the order Insectivora and the suborder Simiiformes. In the Eocene epoch, they almost ruled all subtropical forests, but then almost disappeared from the Earth entirely, as nine-tenths of modern lemur species live on the large island (another name for Madagascar), and their traces cannot be found anywhere else. Lemurs were cut off from the rest of the world and relied on all available forest resources in Madagascar for proliferation and differentiation. Now, there are about 30 species and 40 subspecies of them. Some have faces like dogs, some behave like cats; some are as small as mice, while others are about the size of children; each species is different, both interesting and unique.