Ring-tailed Lemur
Madagascar
The ring-tailed lemur is a special animal found only in Madagascar. It waves its long, striped tail to send signals to the rest of its group.
Quick facts
- Habitat
- It lives in the dry forests and rocky areas of southern Madagascar.
- Diet
- It eats leaves, flowers, fruit, and insects.
- Size and weight
- Body 40–45cm, tail 55–63cm, weight 2–3.5kg.
- Lifespan
- About 16–20 years
- Conservation status
- Endangered
- Fun facts
- Every morning, it sits with its belly facing the sun to sunbathe!
Of the 30 or so kinds of lemurs, it's the only one with black stripes on its tail.
Learn more
Madagascar's fashionista, a forest ghost wrapped in 13 black-and-white rings
The Ring-tailed Lemur
Basic ID information
- Habitat — found only in the dry scrubland and forests of southern and southwestern Madagascar.
- Size — weighing about 2.2kg, similar to a house cat, but with a tail longer than its body.
- Diet — an opportunistic omnivore that eats fruit, leaves, insects, and even soil.
- Conservation status — currently classified as Endangered.
Specialized survival tools
- Tapetum lucidum — a reflective layer behind the retina that gives it clear vision at night.
- Grooming claw — a specialized claw on the second toe, used to scratch hard-to-reach spots.
- Toothcomb — the 6 front teeth of the lower jaw form a comb-like structure used for grooming fur.
The secret of its long, colorful tail
- A pattern matching its spine — the 13–14 black-and-white rings roughly match the number of bones in its tail.
- A non-prehensile tail — unlike what most people imagine of monkeys, this tail can't grip or wrap around branches.
- A tool for balance and communication — it helps balance while moving between ground and trees, and serves as a visual signal between groups.
Two ways of regulating body heat
- Sunbathing — in the morning, it sits cross-legged, spreading its white belly wide toward the sun to warm up.
- Huddling — at night, the whole group huddles together like a ball, pressing their furless areas close to prevent heat loss.
A forest ruled by a queen
- An absolute matriarchal society — females outrank males in every situation, from feeding to movement.
- Large group living — groups of 6–25 form a "troop," which is maintained around a core female lineage.
- Male dispersal — once males reach adulthood, they leave their troop and migrate to a new one, on average every 3.5 years.
A peaceful duel fought with scent
- Mixing secretions — it mixes two kinds of scent secretions, from glands on the inside of the wrist and on the chest.
- Applying tail perfume — it thoroughly rubs the mixed secretion onto its long tail.
- Releasing the scent — it waves its tail toward a rival male, releasing a strong smell to assert dominance.
A gourmet and omnivore that even eats dirt
- Reliance on tamarind trees — during the dry winter, up to 50% of its entire diet depends on tamarind fruit and leaves.
- Geophagy (eating soil) — it sometimes gnaws on soil from termite mounds to supplement minerals or aid digestion.
A brain far smarter than you'd think
- Tool use and reasoning — it has the reasoning ability to select the most functionally suitable tool among several options.
- Mathematical cognition — according to research from the Duke Lemur Center, they've shown basic arithmetic ability and sequence memory.