It’s been a real long time since my last insect posting. I know most of you prefer feathers and fur to exoskeletons, but I figured it was high time we gave a shout out to our invertebrate friends. And what better bug is there than the giraffe weevil? This guy is native to Madagascar and aptly named as you can see. The males have the long, giraffe-like necks while the females have a much shorter neck. Hope you like it, but if not, tomorrow I promise something much more cuddly.

There are more than fifty different species of lemur in Madagascar, of all shapes, sizes and colors. About half of them are nocturnal. This is a crowned lemur — an average sized diurnal lemur. The name is an obvious reference to the reddish crown on the forehead. This individual is a female. Males have the exact opposite coloration (reddish body with a grey crown), a characteristic known as sexual dimorphism.

The Madagascar flying fox isn’t a fox at all — it’s a bat. But it is the largest bat in Madagascar with a wingspan of more than four feet. I was in the extreme southern part of the country when I came across a bunch of flying foxes early in the morning. They were just coming in to roost for the day after a night of foraging for fruits, flowers, figs and leaves.

This one is from my trip to Madagascar back in 2007. Of all the lemurs (53 different species depending upon who’s doing the counting) the ring-tailed is perhaps the best known. They’re latin name is Lemur Catta — appropriate because they meow somewhat like a cat. This one was either waving to say hello, or telling me to get the camera out of her face.

Sometimes you need a hand in there to get a sense of scale. This was a little leaf-tailed gecko that my guide found one night while we were out spotlighting in Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar. In my three weeks in the country, I saw both geckos and chameleons that were as small as an inch long, while others were over two feet.

 A chameleon’s tongue can be one and a half to two times its body length. The strike for prey happens so fast that it’s hard to get a picture (usually about 0.07 seconds). In my three weeks in Madagascar, I only had two opportunities to see and catch a tongue shot. This is one of them.

In honor of my frog loving little sister who’s birthday it is today, I had to search through my archives to find a suitable subject. This beauty is a Madagascar reed frog that I photographed in the town of Maroantsetra. I was stranded in the town due to bad weather and spent several days just walking around the grounds of the hotel I was staying at, looking for whatever animals I could find. When young, these frogs are completely yellow (see this link to a juvenile that I saw the next day) but when they mature, they get that nice light blue color on their backs. Happy birthday Mo.

Panther chameleons not only change colors within single individuals, but they also come in different colors depending upon which region of Madagascar they are from. This is a male from the Tamatave area on the east coast where they are predominantly red. I saw him just as the sun was disappearing.

Some of you might remember these guys — the indri indri lemurs (and no, that’s not a typo, indri is repeated in the offical name). They are the largest of all the lemurs at nearly four feet tall, and 21 pounds. Even so, they can be incredibly acrobatic while jumping from tree to tree. As you can see from this guy, they also look a bit like stuffed animals.

For those who have been receiving my posts for a while, you might remember these guys. This is a Verreaux’s sifaka lemur from Madagascar. They prefer to stay in trees, but when on land they perform a bit of a ballet dance when traveling from one tree to another.