This is a female Oustalet’s chameleon. We crossed paths one afternoon in Ankarafantsika National Park in Western Madagascar. Madagascar is where half of all the chameleons on earth can be found.

Sifakas are a genus of lemur named for their “shi-fak” alarm call. There are several different species of sifaka, with this guy, the diademed sifaka being the largest among them. Diademed sifakas also happen to be one of the most interesting looking of all the lemurs, with their red eyes and golden, black and white fur. This was one of only two or three diademed sifakas that I saw while in the forests of Madagascar.

This is a red fronted brown lemur, photographed in central Madagascar. All lemurs are prosimians, meaning pre monkeys, and as the name would suggest, they predate monkeys and apes. There are nearly a hundred different species of lemur, and they all live in Madagascar. On my trip, I was lucky enough to see and photograph 23 of those species.

Seems to be the week of the eye. This one belongs to a Parson’s chameleon. Chameleons are pretty amazing creatures — they can look in different directions at the same time, they have a tongue that shoots out of their mouths at lighting speed to catch prey, they can change colors, etc.  What they’re not good at, however, is making a quick getaway, so once found, they’re easy to photograph. For this shot, taken in central Madagascar, I was only about a foot away.

After selecting this image for today’s photo of the day, I realized that an awful lot of my recent postings feature an animal staring directly at the camera. Because of this I was going to try and find something else, but then I remembered the particular challenge of photographing eastern grey bamboo lemurs in the wild. It wasn’t easy. These guys are quick. I remember running through the forest with my guide as the eastern greys kept darting from one tree to another. Finally I got this guy to stay still for a second and I was able to get a quick shot. As with all lemurs, the eastern grey bamboo lemurs are prosimians, meaning literally pre-monkeys. Also including tarsiers and bushbabies, prosimians are primates that pre-date the monkeys and apes that flourished in the rest of the world — in the case of lemurs, away from the geographic isolation of Madagascar.

The comet moth is one of the largest moths in the world. It has two sets of “false eyes” on its furry wings — an adaptation to confuse predators. These guys are native to Madagascar, and this one was photographed one morning in Ranomafana National Park.

This is a black and white ruffed lemur, one of the 23 different species that I was lucky enough to photograph while in Madagascar. The ringtail is certainly the most well known lemur, but this guy is probably second. At about four feet from head to tail it is also one of the largest of the lemurs — and from my observation,  one of the most personable and mischievous.

The indri is the largest remaining lemur in existence, standing just shy of four feet tall. It is famous for its very loud and distinctive song which can usually be heard early in the morning throughout its range in northeastern Madagascar.

Click to hear what it sounds like:

indri.mp3

(sound file © 2000 David Parks and Larry Barnes http://www.mobot.org/mobot/madagascar/)

One of the reasons Madagascar is my favorite place on earth is that everything is different. Not just all the endemic animals that are found nowhere else on the planet, but all the plants, the flowers, the trees, the rock formations, the landscape in general that looks and feels like nowhere else. I’ve been so many places now that I can be on safari in eastern Africa and suddenly feel like I’m in southern Australia, or even driving down a stretch of road in Nebraska (until, of course, an elephant walks across the road). It would be impossible for me to convey that sense of otherworldliness in a photo, but I can at least attempt a few small glimpses. These are verreaux’s sifaka lemurs in Madagascar’s southern spiny forest. There’s nothing quite like hiking through the woods surrounded by these exotic animals and  the tall, thorny trees that are everywhere with their pipe cleaner like branches that extend randomly in every direction.