Picture Day Friday: One of Madagascar's Wacky Animals

What a graceful dancer. Madagascar's Verreaux's sifakas is dancing here in the Berenty Nature Reserve. It is a medium-sized primate in one of the lemur families. The fur is thick and silky and generally white with brown on the sides, top of the head, and on the arms. The face is black and hairless and the long tail is used as a balance when leaping from tree to tree. Its body is so highly adapted to an arboreal existence that on the ground its only means of locomotion is hopping (which is highly unusual).


[Image copyrighted by livescience.com.]


[Image copyrighted by Kevin Schafer of arkive.org.]