Endangered
Ring-tailed lemur
Lemur catta
Like all lemurs, it is endemic to the island of Madagascar, where it is endangered.
Appearance
The ring-tailed lemur is a medium- to larger-sized strepsirrhine (wet-nosed) primate and the most internationally recognized lemur species, owing to its long, black-and-white, ringed tail. Due to this lifestyle, they also sunbathe. The lemurs can be observed sitting upright on their tails, exposing their soft, white belly fur towards the sun.
Published measurements include mass about 60.
Range and habitat
Endemic to southern and southwestern Madagascar, the ring-tailed lemur ranges further into highland areas than other lemurs. It inhabits deciduous forests, dry scrub, montane humid forests, and gallery forests (forests along riverbanks). It strongly favors gallery forests, but such forests have now been cleared from much of Madagascar in order to create pasture for livestock.
Like all lemurs, it is endemic to the island of Madagascar, where it is endangered. Known locally in Malagasy as maky (, spelled maki in French) or hira, it ranges from gallery forests to spiny scrub in the southern regions of the island.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
The ring-tailed lemur is diurnal and semi-terrestrial. The ring-tailed lemur is polygynandrous, although the dominant male in the troop typically breeds with more females than other males.
Fighting is most common during the breeding season. Females typically mate within their troop, but may seek outside males.
In crisis
The ring-tailed lemur is highly social, living in groups—known as "troops"—of up to 30 individuals. Additionally, lemurs of both sexes will scent-mark trees, logs, rocks or other objects by simply rubbing their faces and bodies onto it, not unlike a domestic cat. As of 2017, only about 2,000 ring-tailed lemurs are estimated to be left in the wild, making the threat of extinction far more serious for them than previously believed.
Finally, periodic drought common to southern Madagascar can impact populations already in decline. Two years later, the population had declined by 31% and took nearly four years to start to recover.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Ring-tailed lemur is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Ring-tailed lemur, Wikidata item Q185385. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
