In the spiny forest, ring-tailed lemurs call limestone caves home
By Deborah Netburn
December 4, 2013, 1:46 p.m.
Not so long ago, the cute and curious ring-tailed lemurs of southwestern Madagascar had scientists stumped.
Each morning, for about a week, the scientists would arrive in a forest they knew to be populated by ring-tailed lemurs to find the small primates seeming to materialize out of nowhere.
Then the scientists would watch as the lemurs went about their business -- wrapping their arms and tails around each other to form a "lemur ball" for warmth, and then going out to eat baby birds, insects or whatever they could find.
It was all very cute and charming, but what the scientists wanted to know was where did these guys actually sleep?
Ring-tailed lemurs usually spend the night in the tall canopy of trees, but these lemurs were living in an unfriendly forest where the trees were lined with spines, making sleeping in them very uncomfortable, if not impossible.
more
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-in-the-lemurs-call-limestone-caves-home-video-20131204,0,2485999.story
