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The bush babies’ hands and feet are made for walking and climbing. Like many primates, this Aegean creature has opposable thumbs. It improves its grip on branches by urinating on its feet. Its hands are all about grip.
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The black-and-white ruffed lemur is undeniably enchanting and in the wild, they are found in Madagascar and nowhere else on earth. Weighing in at around 4 kilograms this one of the largest living lemur species on the planet. As with many primates, their name draws inspiration from their appearance, and the black-and-white ruffed lemur is no exception. They have black and white fur with a distinctive white gruff around their necks. And if this species isn’t visually striking enough, it also has wide, round, and bright yellow eyes.
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Humans, and only humans, were thought to use and make tools, defined as "Man the Tool Maker."
Then one day in October of 1960, Jane Goodall found a chimp squatting on a termite mound. He seemed to be poking pieces of grass into the mound, then raising them to his mouth. Termites bit onto the modified grass stem with their jaws. The chimp had been using the stem as a tool to "fish" for insects!
Tooling is defined as the process of using an object to achieve a mechanical outcome on a target.
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The ringtail lemur is one of roughly 100 species of lemur - the endangered primitive primate whose native home is the island of Madagascar.
Ringtails are highly social, living in troupes of up to 30 individuals. To keep warm and to reaffirm social bonds, groups will huddle together to form a ‘lemur ball’. Females are dominant and they are the same size as the submissive males. The hormones regulating increased female aggression also lead to enlarged genitals. Girl power. Lemurs got it.
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Primates are remarkable. We’re all familiar with chimpanzees, monkeys, and ring-tailed lemurs, but have you heard of tarsiers, with their big eyes? Or Cleese’s woolly lemur, named after John Cleese? Or the fabulous red-shanked douc? What about the scary-looking red-headed bald uakari? Or did you know that primates can be as small as mice?
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Many African tribes are superstitious about the little Bushbabies or Galagos of Africa - its laughing, chattering sounds are attributed to a mysterious giant snake with a feathered head, arrayed in rainbow colours, which kills evil intruders by pecking a neat hole in their head!
Conservation in Southern Africa is rapidly becoming unsustainable without the active involvement of the community, especially the younger, more active generation. The Bushbabies Monkey Sanctuary and The Elephant Sanctuary group strongly believe that we have to get the younger members of communities involved to instill a passion for the environment and wildlife in them through education.
I'll introduce you to Joyce, for example. A young female capuchin, she was rather pampered with child-like paraphernalia; a dress and a small hat around her head. Cute, indeed. She had been with her "foster" family since only two months old, bought straight from a breeder. The couple who owned her did not have children, and so decided to substitute the missing link with a primate, albeit a bit smaller...and with sharper teeth.
