Get
To Know
Verreaux's Sifaka is a medium-sized lemur who lives in
Madagascar in a variety of habitats from rainforest to dry deciduous
forests of the west and the spiny thickets of the south. Fruit,
bark and flowers are typical components of the diet, but they eat
leaves much of the year. Their fur is thick and silky and generally
white with brown on the sides, top of the head, and on the arms.
They range between 42.5 and 45 cm and adult females reach 3.4 kg
on average, and adult males 3.6 kg. They have a long tail that they
use as a balance when leaping from tree to tree, but on the ground
their only means of locomotion is hopping. They are diurnal and
arboreal, and engage in sunbathing with outstretched arms and legs.
They move through the trees by clinging and leaping between vertical
supports. They live in family groups, or troops, of 2-12, which
may consist of one male and female, or many males and females together.
Group and population sex ratio can be more or less skewed toward
males although their society is matriarchal. They have a home range
of up to 5.0 hectares, and although they are territorial, they defend
food sources rather than territorial boundaries. Males and females
were found to engage in a biological market, exchanging grooming
for grooming during the non-mating period, and grooming for reproductive
opportunities during the mating period. Their play behavior persists
into adulthood where it is used, especially by stranger males during
the mating period, as an ice-breaking mechanism to reduce xenophobia.
Around 45% of females breed each year when in oestrous between late
January and early February and they give birth to one infant after
a gestation period of 130 days. For the first 6-8 weeks, the infant
clings to the mother's stomach, but for the following 19 weeks,
it clings to her back. About 30% of infants are lost to predation
by the Fossa and some to raptors like the Madagascar harrier-hawk.
Those who survive reach sexual maturity between 3-5 years. They
are listed as Critically Endangered in 2020 and their numbers seemed
to be influenced by the proportion of large trees and the plant
species Allouadia procera. They are not in danger of imminent extinction,
but both severe droughts and an increased annual variation in rainfall
levels can depress the population growth rate.
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Are the people who live inside [Manú National
Park]
good for it or bad? And is the park good for them?
- Emma Marris, "Peru's World Apart," National
Geographic, June 2016
Dimes drop into the cardboard box on Sister's desk.
For missionaries, she says, who preach Good News
to people who need to be saved. From what
or for? A child, you don't ask. Count coins.
Wonder how much saving costs.
The photograph: wild girl - full lips,
barely fierce brown eyes, a black avalanche of hair -
floating on a river in Manú. A tamarin crowns her head.
A pet, the caption says, and she, a Matsigenka child.
Eleven-syllables in her name.
The park: saved from rubber barons,
loggers, miners, and extractors of natural gas.
Monkeys: saved from tribes that arrow-hunt.
No guns allowed. Monkeys move fast.
The forest: saved by seeds saved monkeys drop.
Tonight you'll recycle the magazine and stack up
prayers for people who have no time for news,
good or not; who live in tree pole shacks,
in cardboard boxes under every overpass,
in piles of rags squirming in doorways.
You don't know whom you're praying to or what
you're praying for. Is praying the right word?
Like saving, it mystifies. Ponder the sky
that drapes over the Manú. Wonder out loud
to anyone who'll hear, Does saving ever stop?
First published in Carolyn Martin's A Penchant for Masquerades
(Portland, OR: Unsolicited Press, 2019). I own the copyright.
Blissfully retired in Clackamas, Oregon, Carolyn Martin is a lover
of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing
and photography. Since the only poem she wrote in high school was red
penciled “extremely maudlin,” she is amazed she has continued to write.
Her poems have appeared in more than 175 journals throughout North America,
Australia, and the UK. See more at www.carolynmartinpoet.com.
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