rotating header

Monday, February 16, 2009

Dwarf Galago: species identification?

We have decided to call our bush baby Komba, in honor of a character in a book . . . actually the book I wrote the kids for Christmas features a bush baby, which makes this one dropping out of a tree and into our lives a bit interesting. Komba weighed in at 45 grams, that's 1 1/2 ounces. He is 6 cm crown to rump (a little over 2 inches). In other words, he's tiny. His chirpy little voice calls us from his box nest in the bougainvillea outside our kitchen door, and we give drops of warm milk and pieces of soft papaya. He has human- shaped hands, a wrinkled snout, over-sized ears, scraggly dark fur, and a curling tail. His personality is, so far, persnickety.

His order is primate, suborder strepsirrhini, family galagidae, genus galago. I do not know if his species is G. demidoff or G. thomasi, or some other species I can not find information on. So if the biologist (?Jesse is that you) who commented that zoonoses were rare in this family wants to hazard a guess from the pictures and data, we'd love to know.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

He's (she's?) adorable! Nothing's going to sneak in and eat him in his nest is it? Our animals here seem so tame in contrast...

Anonymous said...

Wow. I've never seen anything like it.

Redwillet said...

Wow. You might try posting a photo and description to the Flickr group "ID please" -- http://www.flickr.com/groups/idplease/.