There you go, lemurs! Way to speciate:
The number of known species of the mouse lemur, the world's smallest primate, has increased by 25% with the description of three new species, bringing the total to 15.Mouse lemurs are wide-eyed nocturnal animals that scamper around the forests of Madagascar, an island that harbors a tremendous diversity of wildlife.
Finding new examples of the tiny animals isn't a huge shock -- two new lemur species were reported in Madagascar just last year...Nonetheless, says Jorg Ganzhorn, head of the department of animal ecology and conservation at the University of Hamburg in Germany, and discoverer of several mouse lemurs himself, the new additions make a "very significant contribution" to our understanding of mouse lemur diversity.
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Olivieri and her team traveled in remote areas in a beat-up four-wheel drive, which broke down several times during their six-month stints...They would set up camp for a few weeks at a time, hiring locals to cut trails and placing steel traps loaded with tasty bits of banana at 20-metre intervals. The team would check the traps each morning, with variable success - their record was 52 mouse lemurs captured over one four-night run, says Olivieri.
Taking tissue samples from the lemurs' ears could be a challenge, says Olivieri -- some were feisty when pulled from the traps, trying to bite and escape. But others were docile. "Some seemed quite happy to have something different," she says.
Oooohhhh!!! They're everywhere. (That was a Family Guy reference for those of you who missed it. Click below the fold.)
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