Moving on in primate conservation to a section on Madagascar, here we've got the island of Madagascar, so you're kind of like two maps. So we've got our African regional map, and then this is showing the large island off to the southeast of the continent. We've got five species that are recognized in Madagascar, and the species are so Deubentonia so the ii, could can see that ranges in yellow, quite widely across the entire island. We've got our Hapalemur so our bamboo lemur, kind of in the North Western section. We've got Indri in, purple in again, that Northwestern forest section, and then two southwestern species which have a far more isolated, geographical occurrence. So in red, we've got our mouse lemur, and in blue, we've got our sportive lemurs. Okay, first we'll talk about our Indri, so this is indri indri, first off, I mean, all of the lemurs that occur in Madagascar are pretty amazing, but we've got some variation in palage colors. That's the line drawing on the left, which has resulted in two Indri subspecies being identified, but the results from recent research provide no support for this hypothesis they just talked about being clinical variation in it. What we see is we've got habitat destruction, and we also have illegal hunting. Now, you've got slash and burning agriculture going on through all of Madagascar, you've got logging, you've got fuel wood gathering. And in terms of the hunting, so it was long thought to be protected by local fady, so traditional taboos, but they don't actually appear to be universal, and animals are now hunted even in places where the tribal taboos exist. So, there's also been observed increases in hunting since many of the political crisis that have been going on in Madagascar. So talking about the taboos breaking down with cultural erosion and then also immigration for the people, people moving around or trying to find ways to circumvent the taboos even if they're still in place. They really are looking at trying to build important conservation sites to get rid of some of the hunting that's going on, and trying to use Indri as a flagship species. It's never been successful kept in captivity, so captive breeding program is difficult to predict. want to play a little bit of sound clip for you guys, some of the sounds that primates make are absolutely incredibly fascinating and couldn't quite often be confused for birds in some instances. So here's a clip of an Indri in the forest. [SOUND] Yeah some are between a burger a kid's kind of squeaky toy but really fascinating creatures. Okay, we've got the Bemanasy Mouse Lemur, Microseabus manitatra, what we're seeing is habitat loss, habitat degradation, and as we pointed out on the map a very, very restricted habitat. For the habitat degradation, you see a lot of wood extraction, you see a lot of slash and burn, cultivation slash and burn agriculture, and then you also have fires that kind of reach out of control and burn down a lot of the habitat where these guys live. So one of the things that I mentioned because it was this restricted area, actually it's a special reserve and I'm not going to be able to say this name so I will try my best, it's [FOREIGN] and what's neat about this area is it has a very unusual and highly diverse mixtures of lemurs. So, it's these tiny forest fragments in the southeast corner of Madagascar that really have a very high conservation priority. So other species that live in this area have been on the list in the past and have since been removed but, using this list again as a tool to really kind of help spread conservation across species and across landscapes. Okay, we've got the Lake Alaotra Gentle Lemur, the Hapalemur alaotrensis, is you again, have a very limited geographic range, we're looking at a lot of habitat loss, and a lot of habitat degradation, and finally hunting. So I'll say that, first off, there's about an estimated 2,500 of these individuals left in the wild, and it's the only primate taxon that's living consistently in a wetland. So it's a limited geographic range, there's ever increasing pressures on that shrinking habitat, and it really has caused this lemur to come very, very close to extinction. Okay, James' sportive lemur, so Lepilemur jamesorum, we've got habitat loss, we've got hunting for bushmeat, and deforestation. So lots of anthropogenic pressure, you've got a large population in Madagascar. You've got these forest blocks that are kind of getting smaller and smaller as there's been so much deforestation, mostly based on this slash and burn agriculture but also a lot of mining that's been going on in some of the area. So some of the anthropogenic pressures that have really caused significant problems in this area are due to the high levels of poverty, there's limited job opportunities, there's inflation, and there's a really increased dependence of local communities on resources within the protected areas to survive. So not much of an economy for people outside of the forest area so they need to go into the forest in order to get what they need to survive. With these guys an exact population is unknown. So we just know that they're a declining and decreasing population. Last species we'll talk about in Madagascar are really some of the coolest primates out there, this is the Aye-Aye, Daubentonia madagascariensis, it's an endangered primate, it's also the largest nocturnal primate. So on the map of Madagascar this was the yellow one so it had a widest distribution around through there, they've got a pretty decent dietary flexibility, but there's kind of this huge individual home ranges and then long inner birth intervals. So how long it actually takes for them to have their first offspring, and then how long between offspring so kind of slow population growth within there? We've got habitat destruction, persecution by locals, and what that really kind of means is, if you look at the line drawing, they've got this really, really crazy cool bone digit. And what that's used for is for extracted forging, so when you look at these guys, they get these big very mobile bat like years, and then they've got essentially rodent like incisor so ever growing incisors. So they'll sit there and they'll tap on trees to listen for grabs. They'll now open the bark when they hear something, and then they'll use that long finger to go ahead and go in and spear the grabs or spear other insects, and then eat that out. For a long portion of time, it really is one of those things where, if local saw an Aye-Aye, generally they would immediately kill it because it was seen as an evil omen because it was worried that if they pointed that finger at you then it would cause you to die. So, definitely not helping them survive out in the wild. They're extremely reclusive, so it's hard to go out and find them, it's hard to kind of see them, so because we don't see them all often, it's one of those the extirpation from the forest habitats. So the extinction within those certain areas, can only really be documented long after it's already gone. Now, one kind of, I'll say shining spot for conservation is that, these animals can be kept in captivity. So the Duke Lemur Center has had them and they've bred quite well, and locally here in Denver, a couple years ago, there was one actually there was a pair that were born and you can actually go to the zoo and you can still see them. So really kind of cool to see them, they've got them in a nocturnal enclosure so you have to go in and hang out in the dark for a while to get your eyes adjusted. And then you can see these things running around in the dark and there's just really, really super fascinating, really cool creatures. So that wraps up Madagascar, we'll go ahead and in the next section We'll talk about species that didn't meet this list but why they're still important.
