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Golden bamboo lemur in Ranomafana
This photo is of a poor technical quality, but I intentionally did not try to fix it, because it reflects the conditions of our walk perfectly. As we arrived on the first day in Ranomafana, Madagascar, guides recommended against doing a walk, because it was raining too hard and the path was too slippery and dangerous. At the second and our last day there it was raining again and we decided to take our chances.
What followed was quite a brutal walk, on a steep slippery path with the rain pooring down on us and blood sucking leeches falling from the trees on us. Anyway, we were occassionally rewarded with some cool wildlife, such as this wild Golden bamboo lemur. This lemur is known as nature's drug addict, because it constantly craves bamboo, yet as it contains poisenous cyanide, is in a permanent state of recovering from his food.
The golden bamboo lemur is a medium-sized bamboo lemur endemic to southeastern Madagascar. It is listed as an endangered species due to habitat loss. The population is declining, with only about 1000 individuals remaining. As its name indicates, this lemur feeds almost exclusively on grasses, especially the giant bamboo or ''volohosy'' . The growing shoots of this bamboo contain 0.015% of cyanide. Each adult lemur eats about 500 g of bamboo per day, which contain about 12 times the lethal dose of.. more
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