Conservationists in Cambridgeshire are celebrating after the birth of a "rare and endangered" white-collared lemur.
Madagascar is also home to 43 different primates, none better known than the ring-tailed lemur.
ECONOMIST: Madagascar's natural history: Tales in a twist | The
But it turned out to be a pet lemur which had escaped from a nearby animal sanctuary.
For example, the number of species of monkey, ape and lemur gradually increased until the mid-1960s, when it levelled off.
The researchers found that whenever a lemur looked at a location signalled by gaze, it was most likely to choose that location to search for food.
"The information from this equipment will be fed back to the European zoos breeding lemurs, to help them manage their lemur environments and captive programmes more effectively, " she added.
Its isolation has led to a unique geography and animal population, including the lemur, which took a star role in the 2005 animated Hollywood movie named after the island.
Selective logging and conversion of rain forest habitat to agricultural land are the greatest threats to the survival of the white-collared lemur, together with hunting, according to the IUCN website.
The question was also raised of whether different lemur species adapted to a variety of habitats across Madagascar could all find joy in a relatively small piece of Caribbean dry forest.
Of the four global regions inhabited by primates, the worst hit is Madagascar, where loss of habitat to traditional slash-and-burn agriculture has left some lemur species, such as Perrier's sifaka, stranded in tiny areas of forest.
In a broad sweep, she ranges from the sometimes vicious territorial disputes between rival lemur troops (described with excitement and, at times, sentimental anthropomorphism), to the history of the mica mines and sisal plantations that drove the island's economy after the second world war.
ECONOMIST: Madagascar's natural history: Tales in a twist | The
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