Meditation meditation and love to bask in the sun
Recently, many friends from different places have found such a strange animal when visiting the zoo, and everyone has recorded it on their mobile phones because they are curious and posted it online. To say that this animal is strange, it is not because of strange appearance, but because the sun is out of the circle.
Ring-tailed lemurs basking in the sun
To say that generally in the sun, some animals may like to fight, and some animals like to take a nap after eating, but only this animal is sword-sided, and people sit cross-legged on the ground, open their arms, raise their heads, and bathe in this beautiful sun, which is a few hours. This posture reminds me of a lyric, "Get up in the morning, embrace the sun, full of positive energy", don't say, it really has such a meaning.
In fact, this animal is called the ring-tailed lemur, in addition to loving the sun, people also have a special identity, that is, Madagascar's national treasure.
To talk about why it loves the sun so much, I say it is because of health, do you believe it?
But this has to start with its hometown. You know, Madagascar is a small island in Africa, surrounded by the sea, and the whole island is in the tropics, and the sanitary lemurs happen to live in the rainforest, and the air can imagine how humid it is. Like people, daytime activities, sleep at night, work and rest are very regular, which also causes a problem, because if you sleep in the wild for a night, the air humidity at night is much larger than during the day, and the temperature at night is also lower than during the day, when the ring-tailed lemur wakes up during the day, a lot of dew will be produced on the hair, making itself wet.
Madagascar
In fact, it is nothing to say that wild animals are wet, but in fact, for our ring-tailed lemurs, hair is easy to breed a lot of pests and bacteria in this humid state, and it will get sick if it is not done well. In addition, the ring-tailed lemur's hair is relatively thin, especially the piece on the stomach, this cold and hot, according to our words, it is easier to get cold. So people thought of a good way - basking in the sun. Every day after the sun rises, I sit in a row, open my arms, and sometimes I may mischievously stand in front of my companions, better enjoy the sun, from head to toe, to dry yourself. And this habit has been preserved until now, so even in zoos, they bask together during the day. People often say that going out in the sun is good for the body, but we are not as good as an animal friend, which really makes me feel sorry!
Speaking of this ring-tailed lemur, it is strange, obviously it is a monkey, but it has a fox face, and it does not walk like a monkey, step by step is very elegant. Moreover, its long tail is very high, you must know that a ring-tailed lemur is about 40 cm long, but the tail is 60 cm long, standing straight up, like a striking flag, no matter where it goes. This can also be used as a communication signal between companions, and you can see from a distance whether your companion is being chased by the enemy, and if an enemy chases it, they run, and the distant companion sees their swaggering tail and immediately follows.
Ring-tailed lemur front
But its tail swagger, in addition to being able to stand up like a flag, what is more distinctive is that the tail of the ring-tailed lemur is black and white, like a ring-like pattern, and the markings of this section are generally about 11~12. You may think that it has evolved into this in modern times, but in fact, it is not, here we look at the picture and talk.
A meeting that spans thousands of years
This is a painting that was preserved in the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, "Jiaotoe Guoran Picture", the picture is a ring-tailed lemur with a fox face and a black and white markings on the tail, and the completion time of this picture is in the twenty-sixth year of Qianlong, that is, in 1761 AD, by a painter from Italy, Lang Shining, by the Qianlong Emperor himself inscribed poem, but at this time it was not called the ring-tailed lemur, but called Guoran. Similarly, it was recorded in the ancient masterpiece "Classic of Mountains and Seas", and later mentioned in the "Taiping Yuyan" of the Song Dynasty. That is to say, this monkey has not changed its appearance for thousands of years.
Sure enough, the toe diagram
But how did this ring-tailed lemur find it? This is not specifically recorded, but we can find some clues from its relatives, now there are 21 species in 5 genera of lemurs, coincidentally these lemurs originated in Madagascar. Taking the DNA of ring-tailed lemurs, comparing them on the continent, slow lorises and African night monkeys similar to them, it was found that they may all come from a common ancestor, this ancestor is about 60 million ~ 6500 years ago, according to the fossil found inference, it is concluded that lemurs should have evolved into their current appearance in about 20 million years.
Erik Seiffert, a paleontologist from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and his team of researchers have found a very well-preserved fossil in Egypt, which is an extinct primate Wadilemur elegans, but retains some very obvious features of lemurs. Later, their team published relevant content in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, saying that the tooth features like a comb can prove that this fossil is the ancestor of lemurs, and that through the fossils, it can be inferred that lemurs may have existed 35 million years ago or even earlier.
But why are so many lemurs committed to the small island of Malagaska? This involves geological movement, tens of millions of years ago, in fact, Madagascar and the African continent are closely connected, and later due to the movement of the earth's crust, the islands and continents gradually separated, the ancestors of primates were divided into two branches, one part evolved on the African continent, but because it did not have an advantage in natural competition, it was eliminated in the natural law of survival of the fittest, and the other part lived on the island of Madagascar and gradually evolved into the lemurs we can see now.
Ring-tailed lemur with cubs
The more smelly the more charming, the stinky treasure
Unlike the other 20 relatives, ring-tailed lemurs have very developed stink glands and are the only lemur species with stink glands. When we talked about wolverines as weasels before, we knew that they could mark territory and self-protection through smell, including weasels, skunks, etc., but what is the use of a monkey with smelly glands? In addition to the above two uses, people can actually find a mate through the smell, this smell is really not so smelly in the population, they smell this smell is like humans smell perfume, feel very attractive! If a male ring-tailed lemur has more developed stink glands, the stronger the odor, but can stand out, give priority to mating rights, and be more popular in the female group.
For the production of odor glands, it can be traced back to about 60 million years ago, when apes just evolved into humans, lemurs not only have a very sensitive sense of smell after being separated from humans and apes, but even retain a special odor gland, distributed on wrists, shoulders, and genitals.
What exactly is in the smelly glands of ring-tailed lemurs that can make enemies want to run, but also fascinate females of their kind? Don't say, there are really scholars who have studied it carefully. In the journal "Contemporary Biology", zoologists have found through sampling and observation that the secretions of odor glands are actually trinitroso compounds, composed of dodecaldehyde, dodecyldecahyde and tetradecaldehyde. For the substance aldehyde, later in the journal Science, some scholars proposed that this is an insect-based pheromone that smells like a pear. But it is this smell that makes most organisms smell stinky, but it attracts the opposite sex of the same kind, and even females will specifically smell or lick these secretions. And the production of this stinky liquid is not anytime and anywhere, generally in the breeding season, will secrete more, of course, this is also very related to the testicular technical level of male ring-tailed lemurs.
Ring-tailed lemur
Dangerous! No natural enemy is endangered, and the truth is chilling
This stinky "passive" skill also allows ring-tailed lemurs to have few natural enemies on the island of Madagascar, and have lived for thousands of years. In 2017, New Scientist gave a surprising data, saying that on the island of Madagascar in 1997~2017, in just two decades, the number of ring-tailed lemurs plummeted from hundreds of thousands to less than 3,000, which means that 95% of ring-tailed lemurs on the island have disappeared in these two decades, and up to now, there are less than 2,000 ring-tailed lemurs in the world.
There are no natural enemies, and there are no violent natural disasters, how can the short-tailed lemurs experience extinction in these twenty years? Around 2000, a large number of humans entered the island of Madagascar, which is rich in forest resources and mineral resources, and it is in this rainforest that short-tailed lemurs live here, where people continue to cut wood, open business places, build cities, farms, pastures, including a steady stream of mining here. This has resulted in significant reductions in habitat for many animals, including short-tailed lemurs, and a 90 per cent reduction in the space to sustain life. Without a suitable living environment, there is only a dead end in front of you, making nearly 1/3 of the animals on this island an endangered species.
Even now, the environment on the island of Madagascar has not improved.
From 2019 to the present, the deforestation rate in Madagascar has increased by an average of 10%, and according to custom, between October ~ November, there is also a very frequent illegal burning. According to information provided by Ollier Duranton Andrianambinina, head of the communications and information systems department of the Directorate of Madagascar, an average of about 6,900 hectares of forest are cleared every year on the island. In the past two decades, the northern weeder lemur, also a neighbor of the ring-tailed lemur, has become extinct by about 80%, and the current number is not even 100. Even local residents choose to eat lemur meat as food when they can't eat. And this is also a helpless move, because Madagascar is really a poor place, and the lack of economy has caused the local population to make a living, and can only survive through the sale of natural resources.
Is there no protection for people to destroy forests?
In fact, as early as the 2012 Washington Convention, the ring-tailed lemur was listed as a CITESI protected animal, and in the 2018 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the ring-tailed lemur was listed as an "endangered species". But no matter what the world calls for, if the local economic situation does not improve, people will have no choice but to build on the flesh and blood of local animals and plants to survive. Now people can only do their best to call attention to these endangered species. As for what the future holds, we can only pray that the small island of Madagascar can develop as soon as possible to better protect the few animals on the island.