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Greater Bamboo Lemur — printable fact sheet
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Greater Bamboo Lemur
Prolemur simus
Prolemur simus is a bamboo specialist so committed that it eats almost nothing else, and in doing so it consumes a plant most animals cannot touch: the growing shoots of giant bamboo are laced with cyanogenic compounds, and a lemur working through its daily ration may take in ro…
Did you know?
- Despite eating bamboo loaded with cyanide daily, the Greater Bamboo Lemur has a unique physiological tolerance that prevents poisoning.
- Fossil and subfossil evidence shows the greater bamboo lemur once ranged across most of Madagascar, so its current pinprick distribution is a recent human-driven collapse, not an ancient specialisation. Females, unusually for lemurs, appear to give birth in the dry season when bamboo is at its least nutritious - a timing mismatch that may be a relic of a lost habitat. The species is one of three bamboo lemur genera on Madagascar, all of which partition the same plant by eating different parts of it.
What I learned
Draw the greater bamboo lemur
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