Above: Philipine Tarsier
THE FAMOUSLY WIDE-EYED PRIMATE
The Philippines’ Tarsier (Tarsius syrichta) is an extremely tiny and odd creature. In actuality, this primate is considered as one of the smallest recognizable animals that just happen to be no bigger than a grown man’s hand.
Most frequently, the tarsier comes to life and is active during the night while feeding off on insects – considered as its main meal. Tales from old folks claim that this animal, at times, consumes charcoal. In reality, these primates essentially recover its meal from wood – some of which are burned.
These magnificent creatures can be spotted in islands such as Samar, Leyte, Bohol and Mindanao. Even though the tarsier is a protected species, we must still be vigilant in taking action when it comes to caring for this animal.
The practice of catching the tarsiers in order to sell them to visitors or tourists as stuff animals make these creatures susceptible to being an endangered species. Aside from that, the continuous threat of the obliteration of its natural forest habitat contributes to its declining numbers.
In countless years, the equally damaging “legal” and “illegal” logging as well as the slash-and-burn cultivation of crops caused the diminishing of the rain forests; highly contributing to the lessening of the tarsiers’ population – bringing it to a dangerously undersized statistics in terms of their number in the wild.
If the government and its people do nothing about this, the tarsiers will soon be an addition to the list of extinct species in the world.
BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION
The frequently heard catchphrase for this animal is that it is “The world’s smallest monkey”. To correct each and every one of us, it is first and foremost – not a monkey. In all honesty, its category is quite tricky. Scientists believe that the tarsiers are a taxonomic suborder between primates due to the fact that they’re nearly linked to the lemurs, hushbabies and lorises; and yet, they are also those who classify tarsiers with prosimians – to which they best fit in.
There are actually three related species in the Philippines that have the same description. It is most likely that all three originated from just a singular species. It is thought that they eventually developed into three different races simply because of the physical segregation on the different islands.
Beyond the borders of the Philippine Islands, a number of associated species of the tarsiers can be spotted; amongst them, the Bornean tarsier (Tarsius bancanus) of Borneo and Sumatra, the spectral tarsier (Tarsius spectrum), the lesser spectral tarsier or pygmy tarsier (Tarsius pumilus), and Dian’s tarsier (Tarsius dianae) of Sulawesi, Indonesia.Take note that the pygmy tarsier is significantly more petite than the Philippine tarsier. It is said that the pygmy mouse lemur, which can only be sighted in Madagascar, is now documented as the tiniest primate in the world.
The enigmatic tarsier was initially presented to Western biologists by the report conceived by the missionary J.G. Camel to J. Petiver. Petiver printed and published the claims of Camel’s report in 1705 and dubbed the creature as “Cercopithecus luzonis minimus”. This was the foundation for Linnaeus’ (1758) “Simia syrichtaand” and ultimately the “Tarsius syrichta” followed.
The locals regard the tarsiers as “mamag”, “mago”, “magau”, “maomag”, “malmag” and “magatilok-iok”. It is said that the species is found to be around 45 million years old. This goes back to the primitive Eocene period and is thought of as one of the oldest living land creatures that have continuously existed till the present.
To date, the Philippine tarsier is considered as a “lower risk, conservation dependent” species; meaning even though it doesn’t fall under the category of critically endangered specie, it could very well be in a span of five years or less if the current protection program will be discontinued.
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