Except for an extreme close so as to crop out the barbed wire fence at the Croc Parq in Tana, I've yet to get a good photo of a lemur. I've seen lots of them but they just either won't sit still for me or get into some bad lighting or are just hard to pick out of the trees what with my limited point and shoot zoom. So my quest for a cracking shot of a wild lemur continues.
I wish I could elaborate on the lemurs that I've seen. The best I can do is say that that I've seen 4 brown ones, 4 white ones maybe 8-10 greyish browny type ones and 4 mouse lemurs, which are distinctive in that they are tiny and only come out at night and their eyes lightup bright orange when you shine a flashlight on them. Like I said though, I'm no expert. I did meet someone who is an expert (or soon to be when she wraps up her doctoral studies on lemurs) who is studying lemur health. I asked how the lemurs were doing health-wise and she said she'd let me know for sure when the results came back from the lab but indicated that they'd be doing a lot better if the Malagasy people would stop chopping down their habitat to build pirogues and villages and zebu carts.
Chameleons
While I didn't really realize this before I got here and read up on it chameleons are from madagascar. Literally. They don't exist anywhere else in the world at least not naturally. And it turns out that, counterintuitively, they are quite easy to find. Step 1) Wait until they are asleep. Step 2) Take a flashlight and go look for them.
Zebu
Sounds exotic right. Well actually it's just cows. But they are funky looking cows which have a big hump for some reason. They are everywhere, grazing in the fields, grazing in the cities, grazing in the desert. I mean the desert! What the hell are they eating. Who knows! They pull carts (as below), they get led around by a guy with a stick, they get led around by a leash on their back leg, they wander around by themselves. As I said they are everywhere. Culturally they are important for status as well and I'm always sensing that the locals are looking down on me as if to say "Look at that vazaha. He doesn't even own one zebu".
And what's more they are delicious! They are delicious on brouchettes, they are delicious as steak, they are delicious chopped up in a spaghetti bolognese. Zebus are possibly the best animal in Madagascar no question.
Other Animals
There are lots of other wild animals as well. On the river trip we saw all kinds of birds. Blue ones, white ones, greyish ones that looked like herons only smaller, some kind of eagley hawk type bird that I nearly get a good photo of every time but there is always some minor thing wrong like focus. That's not to mention the chickens that run around all over everywhere and wake me up every morning or the stray dogs that either follow me around or sneak up behind me and start barking and scare the crap out of me whenever I'm in a new city.
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