Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 53
These eastern woolly lemurs,
Avahi laniger
, live in the deep shade of the high
forest canopy and are diffi cult to fi nd during the day. We mistook them for golden lemurs, until
I examined my photos.
Clues that this immigration from Africa happened, though not the
details of how it actually took place, can be seen from the fossil record. A
few lemur-like remains from sixty million years ago have been found in
East Africa. Although lemurs subsequently went extinct in Africa they were
able to thrive on Madagascar, probably because there were fewer predators.
Crocodiles, recently extinct on the island, must have been a constant danger.
But the only mammalian predators that made it to the island along with the
lemurs, aside from humans and the animals that we have introduced, are the
fossas, distant relatives of the African mongooses.
