Mammals
Ring-Tailed Lemur
Lemur catta · also called maky
The ring-tailed lemur is the face of Madagascar’s wildlife — the lemur people picture, with the long striped tail held up like a flag. It is also the most terrestrial and one of the most social of the lemurs, living in female-led troops in the dry country of the island’s south.
Overview
Ring-tailed lemurs live in the dry deciduous forests, spiny thickets, and rocky ravines of southern and southwestern Madagascar, a harsh, seasonal environment with a long dry season. They spend more time on the ground than any other lemur — around a third of the day — travelling in single file with tails raised. Troops are large by lemur standards, 11 to 25 animals, and cohesive.
A female-led society
Ring-tailed lemur troops are matriarchal: a dominant female leads, females stay in their birth troop for life while males transfer between troops, and females have priority access to food and the best resting spots. Rank among females is stable; among males it is contested and signalled largely through scent. This female dominance is common in lemurs and unusual among primates as a whole.
Communicating with smell
Scent is central to ring-tailed lemur life. Both sexes have scent glands on the wrists and, in males, the shoulders and chest, and they mark branches and the ground constantly to advertise identity, status, and territory. In the breeding season males perform the famous “stink fights,” anointing their tails and flicking the scent at rivals, and “spur mark” by dragging wrist spurs across saplings. The 13-ringed tail is also a visual signal, held aloft to keep the troop together on the move and waved in displays.
Diet and the tamarind tree
Ring-tailed lemurs are opportunistic omnivores that shift with the seasons, but across much of their range the tamarind (kily) tree is the keystone food, providing fruit and leaves year-round. They also eat other fruit, flowers, sap, and leaves, and take insects, spiders, small chameleons, and birds. In the dry season they rely heavily on a few hardy plant species and on the moisture in their food.
Reproduction
Breeding is highly seasonal, with mating compressed into a couple of weeks and births timed so that infants are weaned when food is most plentiful. A female usually has a single infant (twins in good years), which rides on her belly and then her back and is cared for cooperatively by other females in the troop.
Threats and conservation
The ring-tailed lemur is Endangered and declining steeply. Habitat destruction — for charcoal, farmland, and pasture — combined with drought, hunting for bushmeat, and capture for pets and tourism has cut the wild population dramatically. It survives well in captivity and in a few protected reserves such as Berenty and Isalo, but securing its future means protecting the remaining dry forest of southern Madagascar.
Ring-Tailed Lemur: common questions
Is a lemur a monkey?
No. Lemurs are primates, but they belong to a separate, older branch called the strepsirrhines, along with lorises and bushbabies — not to the monkeys and apes. They have a moist nose and a good sense of smell, a reflective layer in the eye for night vision, a "tooth comb" of forward-slanting lower teeth for grooming, and a claw on the second toe. Lemurs are found in the wild only on Madagascar and the nearby Comoro Islands, where they evolved in isolation into around 100 species.
What is a lemur "stink fight"?
A way for male ring-tailed lemurs to settle disputes without much physical contact. A male draws his long tail between his wrist scent glands to load it with secretion, then arches it over his back and flicks it toward a rival, wafting the smell at him. Two males may stand off doing this for up to an hour until one backs down. Males also "spur mark," using horny spurs on the wrists to cut scent into branches, and the smelliest, most persistent scent-markers tend to win females.
Why do ring-tailed lemurs sit like they are meditating?
To warm up. On cool Madagascan mornings, troops gather in sunny spots and sit upright with legs apart and arms resting on their knees, exposing the thinly furred belly and inner limbs to the sun. It lets them raise their body temperature cheaply before the day's foraging instead of burning energy to do it. Onlookers often describe the pose as sunbathing or "sun worship."
Are ring-tailed lemurs endangered?
Yes — Endangered, and among the fastest-declining primates. Their dry-forest habitat in southern Madagascar is being cleared for charcoal production, cattle grazing, and slash-and-burn farming, and prolonged droughts have made things worse. They are also hunted for bushmeat and captured for the local pet trade and for tourist "lemur selfie" attractions. Wild numbers may have fallen by more than 95% in two decades, to only a couple of thousand.