There is a horror legend on the island of Madagascar: if you see a strange-looking demon monkey in the trees of the forest at night, be careful. This monkey has a thin and slender middle finger, and as long as it points at whoever it points at with this finger, it indicates who is about to die.
This monkey is the finger monkey unique to the Madagascar archipelago, and it is also a very "terrifying" monkey.
Looking at the appearance first, this monkey satisfies many people's imagination of "devil". The body is only about 40 cm, but the big broom-like tail can grow to 60 cm, which looks very unbalanced, like a big rat.
They have black hair all over their bodies, and the hair feels thick and hard, only the face and chest and abdomen have white hair, but the hair on the whole face is sparse, and the "hairstyle" looks very messy.
Rather than resembling a monkey, the finger monkey's face resembles a large bat, with a small, pointed nose and mouth, and two very large ears. Their eyes are large and their irises are orange-yellow, but they do not look cute on their faces, but more like a monster.
Most particularly, the front paws of the finger monkey are larger than the hind paws, and the shape of the hands is very similar to that of humans, although each finger is elongated, the middle and ring fingers are longer than the others, and the middle finger is particularly thin. (Figure II)
This kind of finger monkey can not make people feel "cute" from head to toe, especially since they are also a nocturnal animal, crying like a human crying, so it is not difficult to imagine how scared the indigenous people of Madagascar will be when they see them in the trees at night. (Figure 3)
However, the real finger monkeys are actually very harmless to humans and animals, their courage is still very small, and they are often frightened by various animals. There was no means of self-protection in the face of danger, so much so that they were once killed when they saw it, nailing their bodies to stakes, thinking that this was the only way to break their curse of "who means who dies".
There are no woodpeckers in the Madagascar Islands, and finger monkeys are the "tree doctors" here because they love to eat larvae in tree trunks.
Compared to woodpeckers that peck around tree trunks, finger monkeys are much more Sven in finding bugs, and their thinnest middle finger is the guy who eats.
Finger monkeys have large ears and a very keen sense of hearing. When foraging in the tree at night, the finger monkey will continue to gently tap the trunk with the middle finger, carefully distinguish the difference in sound, accurately find the cavity dug by the bug in the trunk, and then gnaw a small gap with the teeth, and the slender middle finger can reach in to catch the bug. (Figure 4)
This middle finger has curved pointed nails, and very developed nerves, a particularly keen sense of touch and sensitive movements, and can accurately find fat and tender insects from a pile of wood chips, hook them out and eat them. (Figure V)
In addition to bugs, finger monkeys also love to eat bird eggs and fruits. When eating bird eggs, the finger monkey will pry open an opening of the eggshell with his fingers and slowly drink the egg liquid inside; When eating fruit, I also use my middle finger to dig out the pulp, especially the local coconut in Madagascar, mango, cocoa and other tropical fruits. (Figure VI)
Because they gnaw the trunk with their teeth, the finger monkey's teeth are also different, not only are they the only primates that do not have canine teeth, but they also have the same incisors as rodents. The front teeth of finger monkeys are not only hard, but also grow all the time.
Because of this strange feature, in the 1780s, when French explorers first saw the finger monkey, they thought it was a strange squirrel, and then for a long time thought it was rodent, and it was not known that it was a monkey until 1860, when scientists dissected it.
Finger monkeys live only on the island of Madagascar and are originally very few in number. When the island's forests were converted into farmland pastures, the finger monkeys disappeared in a short period of time, and even wild finger monkeys were not seen after 1966, and they were not found again until the last few years, but the total number is still small.
Scientists have not been able to determine how the "demon finger monkey" evolved to become what it is now, but the most important thing now is how to protect them from extinction, because the finger monkey has still not been able to artificially breed a new generation.
#Headline Creation Challenge##Wildlife##Madagascar##Monkeys##奇妙的动物 #
