1. Madagascar is a large island off the coast of which continent?
Africa
Madagascar sits in the Indian Ocean off the south-east coast of Africa.
2. Which group of animals lives in the wild only on Madagascar?
Lemurs
Every wild lemur in the world lives on Madagascar and nowhere else.
3. A lemur is what kind of animal?
A primate
Lemurs are primates, so they are distant relatives of monkeys, apes and us.
4. Madagascar's chameleons are famous for being able to do what?
Change the colour of their skin
Chameleons shift colour to control their temperature and to signal mood, not just to hide.
5. What gives the ring-tailed lemur its name?
Its long black and white striped tail
That striped tail is held up like a flag so the troop can follow each other through the scrub.
6. When is the aye-aye active?
At night
The aye-aye is nocturnal, and it is the largest nocturnal primate in the world.
7. The fossa is Madagascar's biggest meat-eating mammal. What does it mostly hunt?
Lemurs
Fossa are built for chasing lemurs through the treetops, which is why the two are found together.
8. A tenrec looks most like which familiar animal?
A hedgehog
Some tenrecs look just like hedgehogs, though they are not related at all.
9. Where do most lemurs spend their time?
In the trees
Most lemurs are forest animals, which is why losing forest is their biggest problem.
10. What do most lemurs mainly eat?
Fruit and leaves
Most lemurs live on fruit and leaves, with a few insects and flowers on the side.
11. Which is the largest lemur alive today?
The indri
An indri can weigh around 7 kg, which makes it the heaviest lemur still living.
12. The world's smallest primate is a Malagasy animal. Which one?
A mouse lemur
Madame Berthe's mouse lemur weighs about 30 grams, roughly the same as three teaspoons of sugar.
13. The fossa's closest relatives are which group of animals?
Mongooses
Fossa look cat-like but descend from a mongoose-like ancestor that reached the island long ago.
14. What was the elephant bird?
A giant flightless bird that is now extinct
Elephant birds were the heaviest birds ever known, and they died out around a thousand years ago.
15. Roughly what share of Madagascar's wild species is found nowhere else on Earth?
About 90%
Around nine in ten Malagasy species are endemic, which means they live there and only there.
16. About half of the world's species of which reptile live on Madagascar?
Chameleons
Roughly half of all known chameleon species are Malagasy, and most live nowhere else.
17. How does Verreaux's sifaka cross open ground?
It hops sideways on its back legs
Sifakas are built for leaping between trunks, so on the ground they bounce sideways instead of walking.
18. How did the tomato frog get its name?
Its bright red-orange colour
A big female tomato frog really is tomato red, which warns predators to leave her alone.
19. Madagascar's day geckos (Phelsuma) are unusual among geckos because they are active when?
During the day
Most geckos are night hunters, so the bright green day geckos stand out twice over.
20. The Madagascan flying fox is the island's largest what?
Bat
Flying foxes are big fruit bats, and they spread the seeds of many Malagasy trees.
21. Humpback whales gather off Madagascar's east coast each winter to do what?
Breed and raise their calves
They feed near Antarctica and travel north to Madagascar's warm water to calve.
22. What does the aye-aye do with its long, thin middle finger?
Hooks grubs out of holes in wood
It taps the wood, listens for a hollow, gnaws in, then fishes the grub out with that skinny finger.
23. Chameleons of the genus Brookesia are remarkable for being what?
Among the smallest reptiles in the world
Some Brookesia chameleons are small enough to stand on a fingernail.
24. What can an adult comet moth not do?
Eat
The adult moth has no working mouthparts, so it lives only a few days on the energy it stored as a caterpillar.
25. What does a female giraffe weevil do with a leaf?
Rolls it into a tube around a single egg
She rolls the leaf into a neat tube, lays one egg inside, and the tube becomes the grub's first meal.
26. Where do Madagascar's brightly coloured mantella frogs get their toxins from?
From the small animals they eat
Mantellas take toxins from ants and mites in their diet, so captive-bred ones are harmless.
27. Madagascar has no native snakes of which kind?
Cobras or vipers
The island has plenty of snakes, but none of the front-fanged families that are dangerous to people.
28. How does the satanic leaf-tailed gecko avoid being eaten?
It looks exactly like a dead leaf
Right down to fake veins and nibbled edges. Its whole defence is not being noticed.
29. How does a lowland streaked tenrec make sound to keep its family together?
It rubs special quills on its back together
It is one of the very few mammals that makes sound by rubbing body parts together, the way a cricket does.
30. How do male ring-tailed lemurs usually settle a dispute?
With a stink fight, wafting scent from their tails
They rub scent onto their tails and flick it at each other. The loser walks away, and nobody gets hurt.
31. Why can a fossa climb down a tree trunk head first?
Its ankles turn almost backwards
Flexible ankles let it grip the trunk facing either way, which is how it chases lemurs through the canopy.
32. In a lemur troop, who is usually in charge?
An adult female
Female dominance is unusual among primates, but it is normal for lemurs.
33. How does the Madagascar hissing cockroach make its hissing sound?
By forcing air out through its breathing holes
Most insects that make noise rub body parts together, so hissing through spiracles is genuinely rare.
34. The fat-tailed dwarf lemur is the only primate known to do what?
Hibernate for months at a time
It fattens its tail, then sleeps out the dry season for up to seven months.
35. The golden bamboo lemur eats bamboo shoots that contain what?
Cyanide
It swallows about twelve times the dose that would kill most animals its size, and nobody is quite sure how.
36. What is unusual about the aye-aye's front teeth?
They keep growing throughout its life
Ever-growing incisors are a rodent trick, and they let the aye-aye gnaw into hard wood.
37. Archaeoindris, an extinct Malagasy lemur, was about the size of what?
A gorilla
Madagascar's biggest lemurs died out after people arrived. The largest was gorilla-sized.
38. The ploughshare tortoise, or angonoka, is famous for what?
Being one of the rarest tortoises on Earth
Only a few hundred are left in the wild, in one bay in the north-west, and poaching is the reason.
39. The helmet vanga, a Malagasy bird, is best known for what?
A huge bright blue bill
That heavy blue bill is for cracking large insects, and it makes the helmet vanga unmistakable.
40. Madagascar's boa snakes are most closely related to boas living where?
South America
They are a leftover from the ancient southern supercontinent, long before the Atlantic Ocean existed.
41. How do scientists think the ancestors of lemurs first reached Madagascar?
They rafted across on floating vegetation
A storm-torn mat of trees carrying a few small animals is the best explanation anyone has.
42. Madagascar broke away from India roughly how long ago?
About 88 million years ago
It has been an island on its own since the age of the dinosaurs, which is why its wildlife is so odd.
43. The word 'lemur' comes from a Latin word meaning what?
Spirits of the dead
Linnaeus named them after Roman ghosts, for their night-time calls and huge reflective eyes.
44. What is the Malagasy name for the indri?
Babakoto
Babakoto means something like 'ancestor of Koto', and in many places it is taboo to harm one.