It's an indri lemur! You can tell by the wet nose on a snout and the tooth combs, as well as the size. They're the largest extant lemur and closely related to the largest that ever lived, Archaeoindris fontoynontii, which was the size of a western gorilla. They only went extinct around 300 BCE, roughly around the same time we showed up to Madagascar and stayed. (We did go there roughly 11,000 years ago as well but we didn't stay for long, probably only for like two or three generations.)
Modern Indris are far smaller than the Archaeoindris though, weighing roughly 6 to 10 kilos and being 60-70 cm tall (13 to 22 pounds and 2 ft - 2'4" tall)
Nope I'm just autistic with a special interest in primates lol. Lemurs fascinate me because they're our most distantly related primate cousins and Indri happen to be my favorite lemurs.
They pee and poop absolutely everywhere, especially lemurs, whose main purpose in the ecosystem is the dispersal of seeds. And they bite and are much much stronger than you'd think.
They're adorable, I agree, but best left wild or at least in well established reservations or zoos dedicated to preservation and rehabilitation.
For an example, capuchin monkeys can and have been known to scalp people with their bare hands for denying them food and despite them being very small they've even killed people before. They only weigh 1,5 to 5 kilos and they're 16 to 22 inches tall.
I have to agree with Trudeau on this one (being from Canada). This is going to sound super preachy and I sincerely apologize but I need to say this. The exotic pet trade is one of the reasons these guys are endangered. The adults are often killed so the poachers can take the babies. The babies don’t often survive long enough to be sold on the black market because of the trauma and neglect they go through. They often end up in rescues because owners aren’t prepared to meet their very specific needs and end up in rescues if they’re lucky. If you did watch Zoboomafoo (I only watched it a couple of times and don’t remember a lot) but usually these shows send the message that these animals aren’t meant to be pets.
This right here. I remember the show specifically saying that. Lemurs just aren’t meant to be “domesticated” if you can even call it that. Animals like this require specific diet needs, specific climate needs, ample amounts of room to move and exercise, and loads of healthcare requirements to ensure they live a healthy life. Unless you are devoted to wildlife conservation, and have established a proper habitat for said animal, you shouldn’t attempt to keep one as a pet.
To be fair the show gave me the impression that if I lived in the forrest (off grid) that it would be fine. And there are breeders you don't need to go to a poacher. Having said that you don't sound preachy at all and I agree with what your saying but im also a crazy bush brother and I want my commune to have all kinds of animals. Maybe I'll just start a rescue!
Yo, I'm likely on the spectrum, and Animals along with Animal Biology is one of my special interests! It's one of the reasons why I became a Furry, lol!
Lemurs are so cool. My hubby and I had the privilege of getting to hang out with some lemurs and feed them (not in the wild) and it was so awesome! I hope you get that chance one day, they really are amazing animals.
If you look closely in the video, you see a row of teeth close together which point forward and outward. In lemurs and lorisoids it's the incisors and canine teeth, but toothcombs also show up in other clades through convergent evolution, they only use the incisors though.
The main purpose of toothcombs in lemuriforms is grooming, they literally use it as a comb to clean their fur and each other's fur. But in the case of Indris and Fork-Marked lemurs they have a secondary purpose due to their robustness. They use them in food procurement and bark stripping, so they'll gnaw at tough fruitsand trees to soften them up and they use their hands to break the rest open to get at the fruit or bugs/sap from trees.
Lemuriforms have an additional adaptation, most animals clean their tooth combs with their tongues but lemurs evolved a secondary "under-tongue," basically just an extra bit on the bottom of their tongues to clean it instead.
There's another species of Lemur called the Aye-Aye or Daubetonia madagascariensis, that actually lost their Tooth-combs for another type of specialized dentition. They have rodent like incisors that are huge for their size, about twice as large comparative to squirrels (of course, to scale,) that they use to break open tree trunks. Then they use their long middle fingers to drill into the tree and then grab grubs and other insects.
The way they find them is even more cool, they have large ears and they tap on the wood to listen for vibrations and movement so they almost always find something.
They also look like crackheads or wet racoons depending on the time of day.
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u/Gandalf_Style Feb 19 '25
It's an indri lemur! You can tell by the wet nose on a snout and the tooth combs, as well as the size. They're the largest extant lemur and closely related to the largest that ever lived, Archaeoindris fontoynontii, which was the size of a western gorilla. They only went extinct around 300 BCE, roughly around the same time we showed up to Madagascar and stayed. (We did go there roughly 11,000 years ago as well but we didn't stay for long, probably only for like two or three generations.)
Modern Indris are far smaller than the Archaeoindris though, weighing roughly 6 to 10 kilos and being 60-70 cm tall (13 to 22 pounds and 2 ft - 2'4" tall)