Mouse lemurs

Fortunately Jacques was with us so that I was able to get a closeup look at Mouse lemurs. They are very cute and amazing animals. During the night they are very easy to spot as they are very curious, so when you walk through the bush with your headtorch on looking around they will always look at you and with their reflecting orange eyes they are very easy to spot. Jacques task was to set out traps and catch them to get their measures (eg body length, ear length, tail length, tail circumstance, body mass etc). One of the reasons is to determine in which area what type of mouse lemurs live, so that he also took genetic samples. For the actual measurement they are sleeping so that they don’t stress out too much. Jacques also has to take detailed photos of every single specimen. One of the shots that he takes looks a bit like the criminal pics from their arrest, as the lemurs get a paper to hold with their number and where they where found. This triggered us to let them hold some other papers as well. It is a bit mean to use them like that but I guess it doesn’t make a big difference to them what paper they hold. Aren’t they just so very cute? I find them adorable and this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be able to have a close look and feel of these magnificant animals so I took the opportunity and helped Jacques with his work whenever I wasn’t busy with searching for reptiles. One of the absolute highlights for me was that in the morning we often saw Kattas (or ring-tailed lemurs). I always wanted to see them in the wild and I was extremely happy when they crossed our way to the transects. Unfortunately they aren’t as curious as Mouse lemurs and always ran of quickly so that I was never able to take a good picture… just blurry and far away as I was always in awe when I saw them and couldn’t get my camera out fast enough.