Dr Nancy Priston

The monkeys aren’t the only primate on Buton island. One other tiny little primate lives here – the tarsier.

This tiny little primate, no bigger than my fist, is nocturnal. They live in small family groups and feed on insects. They’re called tarsiers because of their massively elongated tarsal (ankle) bone which enables them to jump huge distances – they can jump over 7 metres, that’s like us jumping over an office block! They have enormous eyes, each eye ball is bigger than it’s brain, and it’s stomach.

They spend the day tucked up inside fig trees and venture out at night to hunt for insects. As they leave their sleeping tree, and in the morning when they return, they call to each other and this is how we find them in the forest.

Here is a little recording of their calls

And some footage of one of them coming out of the sleeping tree (apologies for the occasional camera flash and me whispering in Indonesian to my guide! 🙂 )

I particularly like tarsiers as they look like they’re smiling 🙂

They scent mark the branches, urinating and using their hind feet to spread the scent around the branch

Here is some amazing footage from some camera traps set up by a friend of mine, Vicki Tough from Canopy Access Ltd.  It gives a rare insight on to what they get up to when they’re inside their sleeping trees. He looks like he’s doing a little dance! 😉