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Ring-tailed lemur
The striped tail is the quickest clue, but the time this lemur spends on the ground is what sets it apart from many other lemurs. Troops live in southern and southwestern Madagascar, including dry forest and scrub. That makes it a good starting point for the island’s drier side.
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Indri
An indri’s long call can carry through eastern Madagascar’s rain forest before the animal comes into view. Its short tail and long legs distinguish it from many other lemurs. You can understand a lot about an animal that rarely descends from the canopy by starting with what its neighbors can hear.
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Aye-aye
Aye-ayes tap wood, listen for hollow spaces, and use a slender finger to reach into holes for grubs. The technique makes sense of a hand that might look strange in a photograph. This nocturnal lemur is native to Madagascar and lives in more than one type of forest.
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Coquerel's sifaka
A Coquerel’s sifaka can travel in sideways hops when it comes down to the ground. In the dry forests of northwestern Madagascar, its long legs also carry it from trunk to trunk. The same body is doing very different work depending on what there is to land on.
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Fat-tailed dwarf lemur
This small lemur puts on fat in its tail and draws on that reserve during months of hibernation. In western Madagascar’s seasonal forests, it can spend much of the dry season tucked away in a tree hollow. The tail is part of how it gets through the lean stretch.
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Fossa (animal)
The fossa looks a little like a long-bodied cat, especially when it uses its tail to balance in the trees. It belongs to Madagascar’s own carnivore family. Flexible ankle joints help it descend a trunk headfirst, a useful ability for a predator that hunts lemurs as well as other animals.
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Lowland streaked tenrec
Bands of yellow and black help identify this tenrec from Madagascar’s eastern lowlands. Some of its quills can make sound when rubbed together. It’s a mammal you can recognize by the color of its spines, with a much less obvious use for the spines along its back.
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Panther chameleon
Compare males from different parts of northern and eastern Madagascar and you may see quite different colors. That geographic variation makes a single picture a poor guide to the whole species. The panther chameleon is native to Madagascar, though people have introduced it to other islands.
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Uroplatus phantasticus
The phantastic leaf-tailed gecko can look like a dead leaf, down to the outline of its flattened tail. It is active at night in Madagascar’s forests. During the day its outline and color can make a resting animal almost disappear among the leaves.
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Radiated tortoise
Fine yellow lines spread outward on the dark shell of a radiated tortoise. This pattern belongs to a ground-dwelling animal native to Madagascar’s dry south and southwest, including spiny vegetation. Its shell is a way to recognize one of the animals that lives outside the island’s rain forests.
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Dyscophus antongilii
This tomato frog is native to northeastern Madagascar. Females are generally larger and redder than males, which can be more orange or brown. The common name fits some adults better than others, and it’s also applied to related frogs, so the scientific name helps identify this one.
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Helmet vanga
The deep blue bill is the part to remember if you’ve never seen a helmet vanga. It lives in the humid forests of eastern Madagascar. The head, bill, and reddish back make a distinctive combination, even in a part of the island with other birds in the vanga family.
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Madagascar pochard
The Madagascar pochard is a diving duck. It went unrecorded for years before a small population was rediscovered on a lake in northern Madagascar in 2006. Its story shows why losing a suitable wetland can leave an island bird with very few places to go.
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Madagascar hissing cockroach
This large, wingless cockroach lives among decaying material on the forest floor. The hiss comes from forcing air through openings along its body. That gives you a better way to remember the insect than size alone, especially if you first meet it outside Madagascar in a zoo collection.
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Giraffe weevil
The dark body and red wing covers are easy to pick out, but the extended neck is what gives the giraffe weevil its name. A male’s is much longer than a female’s. This forest beetle provides a different example of the forms that evolved on Madagascar, alongside the island’s more familiar vertebrates.
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