There were three student researchers from the mouse lemur (AKA MORT FROM MADAGASCAR THE MOVIE) team, Hani, Gaetan and Tanjona who had traps out in the field to monitor the mouse lemurs out in La Mananara. They would bring them back in the morning and see what were in the traps. Because of this I was so lucky to see little Mort’s up close! They definitely had the big eyes like Mort from the movie and were super cute! The guys would measure everything from the ears to the length of tail etc and they obviously have sharp teeth so they needed thick gloves to hold onto them. Also in the traps were native Madagascar mice who live in the rainforest, so they’d measure those guys and record them as well. They also caught rats – which of course wasn’t fun (as they are a pest). It was cool seeing how gentle and precise the students were with their measuring of the little guys, and to think we would get to release them into the wild at night time was so exciting!!
After a big day of looking for sifaka, I went after dinner to look for mouse lemurs and the students had one ‘Mort’ to release so I went along with them and we released him into the forest. He was oh so very cute! The students all started calling the mouse lemurs Mort, so it was good for me to know when they’d found more ‘Mort’ in the dark. We went into the forest and using head torches and spotlights, we found a good tree for our little Mort to be released. I was lucky I got some kind of photo before he darted off (SO QUICK) up the tree! Silly me didn’t bring a flash for my camera (I just assumed I wouldn’t use it cos animals and flash isn’t nice, but I could have used a diffuser. NEXT TIME!) so I didn’t get many good photos in the end.
I also was not anticipating seeing all the reptiles! We had Princi with us again as our guide, and wow I swear his eyes are actually binoculars. He was pointing out a chameleon he saw and I could not see it. Like I just couldn’t – I tried sooo hard, but I couldn’t see it. Then Hani starts helping too and pointing and then says ‘it’s like 5m away’ – UM WOT? Yeah of course I couldn’t find it, I was looking within 1m of me, not 5m away at a chameleon that was camouflaged at night time. hahaha He just kept pointing out more chameleons and spiders etc as he walked past, as if these things were like so obvious, like the size of a dog or something. These guides are just so impressive, they know the forest so incredibly well and I just couldn’t get over how knowledgeable they were.
So with their help I saw many chameleons (I will figure out what species later) a few teeny frogs, spiders, a weird caterpillar, and we looked for the nocturnal big lemur, the wooly lemurs. We ventured for ages looking for them and met up with another nocturnal team, who hadn’t seen them either. But we were determined which paid off as we managed to find two in a tree on our way back to camp. They were huddled up high in a tree (what a surprise) so unfortunately no photos to prove I saw these guys!
What a fun adventure! I love hanging out with the students, they are all so vibrant and fun, with Princi as our guide.
