A Hand-book to the Primates, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Henry O. Forbes

Characters.—Fur woolly; the head nearly round; the face short in proportion to the head; muzzle short, covered with hair; the nose and region of the chin hairy; nose-pad on lip large; nostrils opening into a cavity on the upper lip below the skin. Eyes large, the pupil vertical; ears small, concealed in fur. Tail a little longer than the body; body short, stumpy. Third, fourth and fifth fingers flattened; third and fourth toes united by a membrane as far as the first joint.

PLATE X.

THE WOOLLY AVAHI.

Cranium more vaulted and the muzzle remarkably shorter than in the genera Indris and Propithecus; eye-sockets very large; the space between the eyes hollow. Temporal ridges not uniting into a single median ridge. Nasal bones projecting as far as the front end of the very small pre-maxillary bone. Lower jaw remarkably deep and broad behind; line of union of its two halves nearly half the length of the jaw, and in a straight line with the incisor teeth. Toothless space in front of upper jaw greater than in the other two genera. Dentition of the upper jaw: incisors small, the outer larger than the inner, set close to the canines and not at the inner edge of the toothless space; canines vertically short; pre-molars, with no inner cusp, but having a prominent outer cingulum (a character seen in no other species of Lemur); molars, four-cusped. Lower jaw: incisors larger than in the two other genera, and less horizontal, the inner ones more slender than the outer. Anterior and posterior molars, five-cusped. Hind margin of palate reaching to the middle of the median molar. Central bone of wrist wanting (of all Primates agreeing in this character only with Man, the Chimpanzees, the Gentle- and Sportive-Lemurs and the Endrina); fourth digit of the hands and feet longest. Tail long. The small intestine not spirally coiled upon itself, but folded many times transversely.

Hair long, woolly, dark Mouse-grey at base, reddish-brown in the middle, black at the tips. Face broad, entirely covered with short greyish-brown hairs; nose-pad alone nude. Ears concealed and covered by rufous hair; pupil of eye very contractile, very narrow and linear during the day; across the forehead and over the eyes a transverse lunulate whitish band, margined anteriorly by a black band. Back greyish-brown, the nape darker; a patch over the rump, and the base of the tail and buttocks white, washed with rufous; back and inner side of thighs and round the arms whitish; a narrow fringe on the lower margin of arms and legs ashy-grey, washed with rufous; fore-arm, hands and feet rusty-brown; tail bright dark red, deepest at its extremity. Under side and inner surface of limbs grey, washed with rufous. Length of body, 12½ inches; tail, 15¾ inches.

Of this species there are two forms, an eastern and a northern, the latter being always smaller in size, with the fur lighter and less rusty. In some varieties the upper surface is dark rusty-red all over, and the inner sides of the limbs pure white. Examples from the north-west coast are constantly smaller; the head rounder, and the facial hairs grey; no white band on the forehead; upper surface bright yellowish-brown; tail rusty-grey; under side of hind-limbs pure white, the under surface and inner side of the arms whitish. The variation in coloration is due to the middle part of the hairs, which in typical specimens is rusty-red, but is yellow in the above-mentioned form. Hands and feet grey.

Young.—Ashy-grey, slightly washed with red.

Distribution.—The Woolly Avahi seems to inhabit only the forests of the parallel ranges of the mountains which face the whole eastern coast of Madagascar; it extends round the bay of Passandava on the west coast, opposite to the northern termination of this eastern range of mountains.

Habits.—This species—the smallest of the Indrisinæ—being essentially nocturnal, is torpid during the day, and is the wildest and least docile of the family. The first specimen of the "Avahi," the name by which this animal is known among the Anatala tribe, was brought to Europe by Sonnerat, the French traveller, in 1781, and nearly half a century elapsed before a second one was obtained. Since then several specimens have been kept in captivity in the different zoological gardens of Europe.