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Aye-aye
The aye-aye (''Daubentonia madagascariensis'') is a long-fingered lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar with rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special thin middle finger. It is the world's largest nocturnal primate. It is characterized by its unusual method of finding food: it taps on trees to find grubs, then gnaws holes in the wood using its forward-slanting incisors to create a small hole into which it inserts its narrow middle finger to pull the grubs out. This foraging method is called ''percussive foraging'', and takes up 5–41% of foraging time. The only other animal species known to find food in this way is the striped possum. From an ecological point of view, the aye-aye fills the niche of a woodpecker, as it is capable of penetrating wood to extract the invertebrates within. The aye-aye is the only extant member of the genus '' Daubentonia'' and family Daubentoniidae. It is currently classified as Endangered by the IUCN. A second sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lemur
Lemurs ( ) (from Latin ''lemures'' – ghosts or spirits) are wet-nosed primates of the superfamily Lemuroidea (), divided into 8 families and consisting of 15 genera and around 100 existing species. They are endemic to the island of Madagascar. Most existing lemurs are small, have a pointed snout, large eyes, and a long tail. They chiefly live in trees and are active at night. Lemurs share resemblance with other primates, but evolved independently from monkeys and apes. Due to Madagascar's highly seasonal climate, lemur evolution has produced a level of species diversity rivaling that of any other primate group. Until shortly after humans arrived on the island around 2,000 years ago, there were lemurs as large as a male gorilla. Most species have been discovered or promoted to full species status since the 1990s; however, lemur taxonomic classification is controversial and depends on which species concept is used. Lemurs range in weight from the mouse lemur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daubentonia
''Daubentonia'' is the sole genus of the Daubentoniidae, a family of lemuroid primate native to much of Madagascar. The aye-aye ''(Daubentonia madagascariensis)'' is the only extant member. However, a second species known as the giant aye-aye The giant aye-aye (''Daubentonia robusta'') is an extinct relative of the aye-aye, the only other species in the genus ''Daubentonia''. It lived in Madagascar, appears to have disappeared less than 1,000 years ago, is entirely unknown in life, a ... ''(Daubentonia robusta)'' lived until recently, becoming extinct within the last 1000 years. References {{Taxonbar, from=Q2899669, from2=Q12358399 Lemur genera Mammal genera with one living species Lemurs Taxa described in 1795 Taxa named by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Primate
Primates are a diverse order (biology), order of mammals. They are divided into the Strepsirrhini, strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the Haplorhini, haplorhines, which include the Tarsiiformes, tarsiers and the Simiiformes, simians (monkeys and apes, the latter including humans). Primates arose 85–55 million years ago first from small Terrestrial animal, terrestrial mammals, which adapted to living in the trees of tropical forests: many primate characteristics represent adaptations to life in this challenging environment, including large brains, visual acuity, color vision, a shoulder girdle allowing a large degree of movement in the shoulder joint, and dextrous hands. Primates range in size from Madame Berthe's mouse lemur, which weighs , to the eastern gorilla, weighing over . There are 376–524 species of living primates, depending on which classification is used. New primate species continue to be discovered: over 25 species were d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strepsirrhini
Strepsirrhini or Strepsirhini (; ) is a suborder of primates that includes the lemuriform primates, which consist of the lemurs of Madagascar, galagos ("bushbabies") and pottos from Africa, and the lorises from India and southeast Asia. Collectively they are referred to as strepsirrhines. Also belonging to the suborder are the extinct adapiform primates which thrived during the Eocene in Europe, North America, and Asia, but disappeared from most of the Northern Hemisphere as the climate cooled. Adapiforms are sometimes referred to as being "lemur-like", although the diversity of both lemurs and adapiforms does not support this comparison. Strepsirrhines are defined by their "wet" (moist) rhinarium (the tip of the snout) – hence the colloquial but inaccurate term "wet-nosed" – similar to the rhinaria of canines and felines. They also have a smaller brain than comparably sized simians, large olfactory lobes for smell, a vomeronasal organ to detect pheromones, and a bicornuate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ian Tattersall
Ian Tattersall (born 1945) is a British-born American paleoanthropologist and a curator emeritus with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, New York. In addition to human evolution, Tattersall has worked extensively with lemurs. Tattersall is currently working with the Templeton Foundation. Early life and education Tattersall was born in 1945 in the United Kingdom, and grew up in eastern Africa. He trained in archaeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and earned his PhD from Yale University in 1971. Career Tattersall has concentrated his research over the past quarter-century on the analysis of the human fossil record and the study of the ecology and systematics of the lemurs of Madagascar, and is considered a leader in both areas. Tattersall believed that existing literature was not an adequate resource for comparing human fossils because of the many terminological variations. As a result, Tattersall and research associate Jeffrey Schwartz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (15 April 177219 June 1844) was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories. Geoffroy's scientific views had a transcendental flavor (unlike Lamarck's materialistic views) and were similar to those of German morphologists like Lorenz Oken. He believed in the underlying unity of organismal design, and the possibility of the transmutation of species in time, amassing evidence for his claims through research in comparative anatomy, paleontology, and embryology. He is considered as a predecessor of the evo-devo evolutionary concept. Life and early career Geoffroy was born at Étampes (in present-day Essonne), and studied at the Collège de Navarre, in Paris, where he studied natural philosophy under M. J. Brisson. He then attended the lectures of Daubenton at the College de France and Fourcroy at the Jardin de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Edward Gray
John Edward Gray, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (12 February 1800 – 7 March 1875) was a British zoology, zoologist. He was the elder brother of zoologist George Robert Gray and son of the pharmacologist and botanist Samuel Frederick Gray (1766–1828). The same is used for a zoological name. Gray was Keeper of Zoology, keeper of zoology at the British Museum in London from 1840 until Christmas 1874, before the natural history holdings were split off to the Natural History Museum, London, Natural History Museum. He published several catalogues of the museum collections that included comprehensive discussions of animal groups and descriptions of new species. He improved the Zoological specimens, zoological collections to make them amongst the best in the world. Biography Gray was born in Walsall, but his family soon moved to London, where Gray studied medicine. He assisted his father in writing ''The Natural Arrangement of British Plants'' (1821). After being Blackballing, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Sonnerat
Pierre Sonnerat (18 August 1748 – 31 March 1814) was a French naturalist, colonial administrator, writer and explorer. He described numerous species of plants and animals on his travels and is honoured in the genus ''Sonneratia'' and in other specific names such as that of the grey junglefowl ''Gallus sonneratii.'' Life and travels Sonnerat was born in Lyon and was the nephew of the botanist Pierre Poivre (mother of Pierre Sonnerat, Benoîte Poivre, was a cousine of Pierre Poivre) who was a French colonial administrator in the Mascarenes. Sonnerat became a private secretary to his uncle Pierre and made several voyages to southeast Asia, visiting the Philippines and Moluccas between 1769 and 1772. In Mauritius Sonnerat met the naturalist Philibert Commerson in 1767 and worked for him briefly, travelling to Reunion. He then worked as a naval commissar and travelled to India and China from 1774 to 1781 with a base in Yanam and Pondicherry. From 1781 to 1785 he was in France ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Shaw (biologist)
George Kearsley Shaw (10 December 1751 – 22 July 1813) was an English botanist and zoologist. Life Shaw was born at Bierton, Buckinghamshire, and was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, receiving his M.A. in 1772. He took up the profession of medical practitioner. In 1786 he became the assistant lecturer in botany at the University of Oxford. He was a co-founder of the Linnean Society in 1788, and became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1789. In 1791 Shaw became assistant keeper of the natural history department at the British Museum, succeeding Edward Whitaker Gray as keeper in 1806. He found that most of the items donated to the museum by Hans Sloane were in very bad condition. Medical and anatomical material was sent to the museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, but many of the stuffed animals and birds had deteriorated and had to be burnt. He was succeeded after his death by his assistant Charles Konig. Works Shaw published one of the first English descrip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Friedrich Gmelin
Johann Friedrich Gmelin (8 August 1748 – 1 November 1804) was a German natural history, naturalist, botanist, entomologist, herpetologist, and malacologist. Education Johann Friedrich Gmelin was born as the eldest son of Philipp Friedrich Gmelin in 1748 in Tübingen. He studied medicine under his father at University of Tübingen and graduated with a Master's degree in 1768, with a thesis entitled: ', defended under the presidency of Ferdinand Christoph Oetinger, whom he thanks with the words '. Career In 1769, Gmelin became an adjunct professor of medicine at University of Tübingen. In 1773, he became professor of philosophy and adjunct professor of medicine at University of Göttingen. He was promoted to full professor of medicine and professor of chemistry, botany, and mineralogy in 1778. He died in 1804 in Göttingen. Johann Friedrich Gmelin when young became an "apostle" of Carl Linnaeus, probably when Linnaeus was working in the Netherlands, and undertook a plant-c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malagasy Language
Malagasy (; ) is an Austronesian language and the national language of Madagascar. Malagasy is the westernmost Malayo-Polynesian language, brought to Madagascar by the settlement of Austronesian peoples from the Sunda islands around the 5th century AD. The Malagasy language is one of the Barito languages and is most closely related to the Ma'anyan language, still spoken on Borneo to this day. Malagasy also includes numerous Malay loanwords, from the time of the early Austronesian settlement and trading between Madagascar and the Sunda Islands. After c. 1000 AD, Malagasy incorporated numerous Bantu and Arabic loanwords, brought over by traders and new settlers. Malagasy is spoken by around 25 million people in Madagascar and the Comoros. Most people in Madagascar speak it as a first language, as do some people of Malagasy descent elsewhere. Malagasy is divided between two main dialect groups; Eastern and Western. The central plateau of the island, where the capital Antananari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton
Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton (29 May 1716 – 1 January 1800) was a French naturalist and contributor to the ''Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers''. Biography Daubenton was born at Montbard, Côte-d'Or. His father, Jean Daubenton, a notary, intended him for the church, and sent him to Paris to study theology, but Louis-Jean-Marie was more interested in medicine. Jean's death in 1736 set his son free to choose his own career, and in 1741 he graduated in medicine at Reims and returned to his hometown, planning to practice as a physician. At about this time, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, also a native of Montbard, was preparing to bring out a multi-volume work on natural history, the ''Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière'', and in 1742 he invited Daubenton to assist him by providing anatomical descriptions. In many respects, the two men were complete opposites, but they worked well in partnership. In 1744, Daubenton becam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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