The smallest of all lemurs is called the lesser mouse. This one is only about four inches long, plus a four-inch tail, and weighs just a few ounces. This tiny creature has brown fur over the top of its head, back and tail, with white fur on its chin, neck, stomach and the back of its front paws. Sometimes it is simply called the mouse lemur.
By contrast, one of the largest is the indri. Its body is about two feet long and weighs about fifteen pounds. Surprisingly, its tail is quite short. But it is handsome with its black and white body and black paws, which look like they have fancy gloves and slippers on. The indri can jump as much as twenty feet between trees. A male and female, waking from a nap in the daytime, make strange calls which can be heard a long distance away.
Another large lemur is the ring-tailed. Its whole face is white, contrasted with a cap-like top, eyes, nose and mouth which are all deep brown. Its body is dark brown above and solid white beneath. Its name comes from its long, heavily furred tail, which has wide rings of dark brown and pure white around it.
There is something strange about those named black lemurs. Only the male is black. The female is a beautiful reddish color, with a black face fringed with feather-like white tufts of hair around her chin and up both sides, but the top of her head is smooth and bare.
There are three varieties of a species known as bamboo lemurs. They got this name because they mostly eat the tender parts of bamboo shoots. The prettiest is called the golden bamboo. The males have red-gold tails, golden eyebrows, golden chipmunk-like cheeks, teddy-bear ears and black noses and eyes. Of the other two bamboo varieties, one has reddish fur and the other is more plain gray, but all three varieties really are beauties.
If these animals interest you, no doubt a library near you will have books with pictures of a great many more. They are, of course, only a very small part of God’s creation.
Whatever we see or hear in the things of nature should always remind us that nothing came into the world by chance. A Bible verse tells us, “Thou, even Thou, art Lord alone; Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and Thou preservest them all” (Nehemiah 9:66Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee. (Nehemiah 9:6)). How plainly this verse tells us that the Lord God made it all.
ML-09/10/2006