Gray mouse lemur
Microcebus murinus
— Where the name comes from
Microcebus is “little monkey”, from the Greek mikrós and kêbos; murinus is the Latin “mouse-like”, from mus. Two languages to say the same thing twice: it is tiny. In Malagasy it is called tsidy, and local names for these nocturnal lemurs are often bound up with taboo — in some regions they bring bad luck and are not touched, which has protected them by accident.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Primates
- Habitat
- Dry deciduous forest and spiny thicket of the west
- Range
- Endemic to western and southern Madagascar
- Size
- 12–14 cm of body plus 13–15 cm of tail, 58–67 g
- Diet
- Omnivore — insects, fruit, flowers, gum, small vertebrates
- Lifespan
- 8–10 years in the wild, up to 18 in captivity
— Characteristics
- 01
It is among the smallest primates in the world: it fits in the palm of a hand.
- 02
It stores fat in its tail and goes into torpor for weeks in the dry season.
- 03
Females can hibernate for months; males far less.
— What sets it apart
It is a primate that hibernates, which nobody would expect of a relative of the monkeys. In the dry season of western Madagascar, when insects and fruit vanish, it fattens its tail until it has doubled in volume, slips into a hollow tree and lets its body temperature fall to that of the surrounding air, with the heartbeat collapsing. It can stay there for months. That has made it a laboratory animal in ageing research: it ages fast, it has a primate brain, and it knows how to switch itself off.
