Paradise And Lemurs Lost

This is the 3rd day of my DOTE fundraiser. If you value this website, please consider making a donation. See Monday's post DOTE Needs Your Support to get the details —Dave

---

Thousands of years ago the island of Madagascar was a forest-covered paradise filled with lemurs. This Eden was a world apart. And then humans arrived.

People first came to Madagascar in boats about 2000 years ago. The oldest human-modified bones of extinct species appear in the fossil record at this time...

When humans first arrived on Madagascar, there were at least 50 lemur species living on the island, the largest of which rivaled the body mass of a male gorilla or orangutan

Not one of the 33 lemur species that still survive on the island is as large as the smallest of the lemurs that disappeared from Madagascar during the past several millennia. Along with the giant lemurs, Madagascar was populated by other megafauna that have also since vanished. There were huge tortoises, giant predatory raptors, and pygmy hippopotamuses. There were gigantic flightless birds called elephant birds. These birds were larger than any other birds - living or extinct. They were heavier than the famous 10-foot-tall moas of New Zealand. The eggs of elephant birds could hold the fluid contents of about 180 chicken eggs! There were no cats or dogs on Madagascar; rather there were strange primitive carnivores (mongooses, civets, and cryptoprocts), including one that weighed more than 10 kilograms.

Over the past 2000 years, all of Madagascar's large endemic animals became extinct, and it is estimated that less than 3% of what was once a huge expanse of western deciduous forest exists today...

Lemurs are prosimian primates belonging to the suborder (along with tarsiers and lorises) Strepsirrhini, as opposed to the Anthropoidea (monkeys, apes, and hominins). They have been living on Madagascar for a long, long time, and are found nowhere else in the world. Chris Beard's The Hunt For The Dawn Monkey explains what is known about the evolutionary trajectory of the lemurs.

The fossil record sheds only the dimmest light on the early colonization of Madagascar by primitive lemurs, because sites of appropriate antiquity remain unknown on the island. However, analyses fo the DNA of living and recently extinct lemurs have shown that they all evolved from a single ancestor that invaded Madagascar during the early part of the Cenozoic, about 54 million years ago.

These early lemurs encountered a depauperate island fauna that offered few competitive obstacles to their evolutionary success. They radiated into a rich array of shapes and sizes, filling much fo the ecological vacuum that Madagascar presented. Evenutally, the descendents fo the first lemur colonists of Madagascar would include species as small as living mouse lemurs and others—such as the recently extinct Palaeopropithecus and Archaeoindris—that approached the size of large apes. Certain lemurs acquired specializations for eating insects, leaves, bamboo, seeds, fruits, sap and gum. Various species evolved into slothlike (Palaeopropithecus), monkeylike (Hadropithecus), and even vaguely woodpeckerlike (Daubentonia) forms. In constrast, the nearest relatives of the lemurs—African bushbabies and African and Asian lorises—span a much smaller range of body sizes and ecological roles...

The remaining species of lemurs form a unique heritage beyond price. Needless to say then, I was quite angry when I read Madagascar's Lemurs [are the] most threatened mammals in the world.

Leading conservationists have gathered at a workshop of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission this week to review the conservation status of the world’s 103 lemur species — the most endangered primate group in the world...

The conservation status of 91 per cent of the world’s lemur species have now been upgraded to either ‘Critically Endangered’, ‘Endangered’ or ‘Vulnerable’ on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species – an indicator of rampant forest loss which additionally endangers vital ecosystem services that support Madagascar’s people.

Of the world’s 103 different species of lemurs, 23 are now considered ‘Critically Endangered’, 52 are ‘Endangered, 19 are ‘Vulnerable’ and three are ‘Near Threatened’. Just three lemur species are listed as ‘Least Concern’.

A previous assessment carried out in 2005 as part of a Global Mammal Assessment identified 10 species as ‘Critically Endangered’, 21 as ‘Endangered’, and 17 as ‘Vulnerable’, already a very high number. 

However, given the recent increases in the number of new species and the fact that the level of threat has increased over the past three years, the experts decided to carry out a reassessment of Madagascar’s lemur fauna.

[My note: ignore discrepancies in the number of lemur species counted in these articles.]

Lemurs are in danger of becoming extinct by destruction of their tropical forest habitat on their native island of Madagascar, off Africa's Indian Ocean coast, where political uncertainty has increased poverty and accelerated illegal logging. Hunting of these animals has also emerged as a more serious threat than previously imagined...

Among the most spectacular species of lemurs assessed as ‘Critically Endangered’ this week is the indri [image top left], the largest of the living lemurs and a species of symbolic value comparable to that of China’s giant panda, Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur, at 30 grams the world’s smallest primate, and the blue-eyed black lemur, the only primate species other than humans that has blue eyes.  Probably the rarest lemur is the northern sportive lemur (Lepilemur septentrionalis), of which there are only 18 known individuals left.

So there you have it. These lemurs first occupied Madagascar about 54 million years ago in the very early Eocene. There they radiated undisturbed for all that time up until about 2000 years ago, when humans first arrived. After these humans killed off some number of species, there was a tenuous "truce" for a while until fairly recently, historically speaking, when human pressures on lemur populations intensified. And now 97 of the 103 species listed are critically endangered (23), endangered (52), vulnerable (19) or near threatened (3).

I don't know why it is, but of all the outrageous things that humans perpetrate, it bothers me the most when we exterminate our near or distant cousins among the primates. I become apoplectic when I see reports about these abominations. The fact that lemurs are prosimians and not anthropoids has no bearing on the matter as far as I'm concerned.

More importantly, the fact that human beings are irremediable fuck-ups has serious consequences. If you've been reading DOTE for any length of time, that should be clear to you now. When I see reports like the one I cited, I don't give a damn whether Homo sapiens survives its own depredations or not. It is completely clear which outcome would be best for the lemurs ... if we don't take them down with us.

Thus I have little else to say. I will show part 1 of an episode of In The Wild. This great documentary about the lemurs of Madagascar first aired on PBS in 1999, and is hosted by John Cleese.

 

Comments

[Wanooski]

It's just so depressing, to think of all the incredible mammal and bird species that modern eyes will never get to see, except in artists' impressions. All wiped out by the two legged virus.

[Anywhere But Here Is Better]

Dear Lemurs, past and present

I am thoroughly ashamed to be a human. While I personally have endeavoured not to cause direct harm to fellow inhabitants of Planet Earth, I want to apologise for the whole of my species. I go on record in accepting responsibility for our utter disregard for the balance of Nature, and for our rapacious conduct wherever we have set foot on the globe - and wherever we have caused detriment through our abuse of the land, the sea and the air.

Although it is far from clear if any of you will out-survive us, it is my fervent wish that we go quietly into the night before we make this planet completely inhospitable to all other creatures who have a more compelling right to life than us.

I particularly want to say sorry for our criminally insane assumption that we are at the top of the evolutionary ladder. This colossal mistake has led us to treat the world as our own possession, to do with as we please. At this late stage, I fear there is nothing that could be done to reverse the full-scale assault on your existence, except that we vacate the premises. Fortunately for the world, we are fully engaged in this process. With patience, you may be left in peace sooner rather than later.

per pro Homo Sapiens
18 July 2012

[Bill McDonald]

There is a man in Madagascar who works as a tourist guide and has used most of his earnings to buy land to set aside as a private preserve, like our wilderness areas here. He was honored with the 2010 Seacology Award for his work. I invite all of you to google this man's name and to read about him and his life's passion to try to help save Madagascar.

His name is Rabary Désiré.

Here is a video link to see him and his work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gu33LgqWIA8

Bill McDonald

[James]

Fear not, humans will only go kicking and screaming into oblivion after we have ravaged every bit of biomass we can get or fingers on, leaving only slick toxic pits and ash in our wake. Kinship means nothing; we will happily destroy our own, much less anything that can be categorized as "other", with only the slightest pretext of need or desire or, just as likely, obliterate them in wanton, seething ignorance.

We are The Great Devourer.

[Mike]

Sad article but as James says,when Humans cannot even care for members of their own species,expecting them to act responsibly and safeguard other sentient beings on Earth will be a long shot. If only we could put an " economic value" on endangered species. Then the "serious" people in charge of our world could at least pretend to care about problems like this.

[Joy]

The Steller sea cow (there were once giant manatees in Alaska?), the Caribbean Monk Seal (there were once seals in the tropical Caribbean?), the Yangtze river dolphin ... The outcome is not in doubt, only the date.

[Gretchen]

I cry for the elephants, always have since a kid. The list of my hurting and lost brothers and sisters is so long now I am making a remembrance book to hand off to my son and grandchildren about the way things used to be. It is a sad story, this one of human species, because the irrevocable damage is so needless. heh, as a 4th grader I took an F because I wouldn't pin my butterflies for science class and released them instead. Took another F in highschool because I wouldn't kill a frog. Had no prob dissecting human corpses in college, but I refuse to kill or experiment on my animal friends. I really have to get to Kenya soon.

[Ben]

The misery the lemurs experience dying off because of human arrogance, carelessness, and encroachment is unimaginable. And then there is the suffering experienced directly at the hands of humans, at the hands of poachers, which is equally miserable, that just ... it's a holocaust ... I don't use that word lightly. The sooner we're gone, the better it is for the other species on this planet.