Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
can also give birth to enormous litters which the mother feeds with up to 24 nipples. The
19 species of furred tenrecs are mostly shrew-like in stature, although three species look
and act more like moles, and one has become aquatic, capturing small fish and freshwater
shrimps in the fast-flowing streams of the
hauts plateaux
.
Rodents
Highlysuccessful elsewhere, rodentshavemadelittle impression onMadagascar.
There are 20 species, most of which are nocturnal. The easiest to see is the red forest rat
(
Nesomys rufus
) which is active during the day. The most unusual are the rabbit-like giant
jumping rat (
Hypogeomys antimena
) from the western forests and the two tree-dwelling
Brachytarsomys
species which have prehensile tails.
Civets and mongooses
The island's nine carnivores belong to the civets and mongooses,
Viverridae, which evolved 40 million years ago at about the same time as the cats. The
largest, the fossa (
Cryptoprocta ferox
), is very cat-like with an extremely long tail which
assists balance during canopy-based lemur hunts. This extremely shy creature is quite
widespread but rarely seen - except in November, see
Click Here
-
Click Here
.
The size of
a chubby cat, the striped civet (
Fossa fossana
) hunts in the eastern rainforests for rodents,
and a third, very secretive animal, the
falanouc (Eupleres goudotii
) inhabits the northeast-
ern rainforests where it lives almost entirely on earthworms. Each of Madagascar's forest
types plays host to mongooses. There are six species in all (one only just discovered near
Lake Alaotra as this topic went to press), the most commonly seen being the ring-tailed
mongoose (
Galidia elegans
) which varies in colour but is typically a handsome, rusty red.
Bats
Possessing, among mammals, the unique gift of flight, it is not surprising that most
of Madagascar's bats are also found on mainland Africa or Asia. There are three species
of fruit bat which are active during the day, very noisy, large and unfortunately often on
theMalagasymenu.Ifthefruitbatslooklikeflyingfoxes(theiralternative name),thenthe
remaining 30 or so species are not unlike flying mice. These are nocturnal, prefer moths to
figsandfindthembyecholocation. Theytendtohaveshell-like earsanddistortednoses.It
is known that some moths outwit these bats by chirping back at them in mid-flight, scram-
bling the echo and sending the aggressor off into the night.
SEX AND THE FOREST
Hilary Bradt
It's a jungle out there! I don't know what it is about Madagascar, but when it comes
to male equipment the animals seem to be more interestingly and excitingly endowed
here than anywhere else in the world. For starters there's the parrot that does it with
a golf-ball (see
Click Here
), but the fossa puts even that eye-watering performance in
