Finally we arrived at the village of Ampijoroa at the foot of the small escarpment on which lay the forest reserve. We found a huge and beautiful grove and here we pitched camp. At dawn the next morning the trees above our tents were full of a great chorus of birds, busily hunting through the sunlit tree-tops in search of insect life. I noticed that the bit of forest in which we had so gaily pitched our camp was in reality a most dangerous place, for the trees were of that formidable species whose trunk is completely covered with stout thorns, sharp as needles, each about two inches long. They made moving through the trees a hazard, for should you trip, you automatically put a hand out to a tree trunk to steady yourself, and immediately your hand was lacerated. What was even worse, I found, was that, unthinkingly, you would sometimes lean up against spiky trunk to steady yourself while examining the canopy above through your binoculars. Both your shirt and your back suffered from this manoeuvre.
This morning of our arrival I was busy dodging thorns and trying to watch birds, when a great cacophony of purring grunts broke out in the tree-tops a short distance away from me, and I could hear the swish of branches. Making my way as rapidly as I could through the forest I soon found myself standing below a group of trees in which some lemurs were feeding. Suddenly they all left the trees they were in and did an astonishing thing; they bounded through the branch towards me and having reached a vantage point they stopped and peered down at me. I saw that they were sifakas, but of a different and more handsome subspecies than the ones I had fallen in love with at Berenty. These seemed slightly more creamy in colour, and the insides of their forearms and thighs were a rich, glinting mahogany-chestnut. This was a beautiful combination of colours, making them very handsome and spectacular. What interested me, as I watched, was their silence. Apart from that one outburst of song, they were quite quiet. Only when they jumped onto a slender branch that bent beneath their weight did the leaves swish and give away their presence. Otherwise, silent as clouds they drifted through the forest taking enormous, bouncing jumps from tree to tree. I decided that, although the Berenty sifakas were wonderful, these, with their flamboyant coloration, were really the more beautiful.
Later that day we made our way up onto the escarpment, and, following the sandy tracks through the trees, we soon reached Roland’s well-appointed camp in the heart of the forest. Here he explained to us what he and his students from the University were doing. They were, in fact, trying to piece together a portrait of the forest. A certain area had been chosen; it was then divided into areas like a chessboard by clearing a series of narrow paths. Each path had its number and this corresponded to the numbers on a map. Thus, wherever you were in the forest, by consulting the number pinned to a tree at the intersections and comparing it to the map, you knew exactly where you were. It was like saying you turn left down the Champ Elysées, right along Old Bond Street and left again at Forty-second Street. Each one of the squares thus created by this network of little paths were being studied in detail. Plants, insects, reptiles were being catalogued; birds caught in mist nets, ringed and released. There were even leaf traps, specially constructed boxes which caught falling leaves so that their density and therefore their contribution to the humus on the forest floor could be ascertained.
In addition, the lemur troops that lived in this strange dry deciduous tropical forest were being studied, and this by means of a new weapon (literally) in the armoury of the modern scientist—the dart gun. This is like a very aristocratic version of the air rifle and shoots what is, to all intents and purposes, a hypodermic syringe with a tranquilliser in it. You aim it at the animal’s flank, the dart enters and within a minute or so the animal is unconscious and falls from the tree into your nets, or, in some cases, your open arms. Once the animal is thus captured a small radio collar is put around its neck and then, when the specimen recovers, it is released at the place of capture. None the worse for its experience, and apparently unaware of its collar, it goes back top to join its companions (if it is a gregarious species) or continues its solitary existence. But whichever it does its every movement can be followed by the small radio in the collar which sends out a regular signal that is picked up on a portable apparatus with an aerial. The bleeps tell where the creature is and where and when it moves, and these movements can then be recorded on the map. So by walking through the forest with your radio receiver, with a minimum of difficulty you can track down all the lemur troops and study their habits.
There are two species that Roland wanted to fit collars to, and he had put off capturing them until we arrived so that we could observe and film the whole process. So that afternoon we spread out through the forest in search of a sifaka troop, and after about an hour’s search we found one indulging in a siesta in a group of trees. As we congregated below them they watched us with deep interest and complete lack of fear. Roland loaded the dart gun, took careful aim at the sifaka and fired. There was a faint plop, like the noise made by an old-fashioned popgun, and the dart hit one of the lemurs accurately in the thigh. The animal jumped slightly, but more from surprise at the noise from the gun. It did not appear to even notice the dart, with its brightly coloured wool ‘feathers’ sticking out of its thigh. Gradually its head drooped forward, its hands and feet relaxed their hold on the branches, and it slid down and we caught it gently before it hit the ground. They were lovely creatures to see at a distance, but to have an opportunity to examine one at close quarters was a rare privilege. The fur was dense, soft and woolly and the chestnut red on the arms and legs was even more pronounced close up. The hands and feet were beautifully adapted for grasping, and the skin was black and so soft that any woman would have been envious of its velvety texture. The great eyes were a beautiful shade of a bronze chrysanthemum and were wide open, staring out unseeingly, for the animal was completely unconscious. Rapidly Roland fixed the little leather collar with the transmitter round its neck. We then placed the creature in a bag and left it in a cool, shady place to recover. Within a couple of hours it had revived sufficiently to be released, and it scrambled up the trees a little shakily to rejoin its companions, unaware that its transmitter was flooding Roland’s receiver with a steady series of high-pitched ‘bleeps’.
Our second hunt took place after dark with headlights, for our quarry was one of the smaller, nocturnal lemurs called an avahi. (There are actually seven different species of lemur in this large and important forest, but our short time there, only allowed us to see two.) We were lucky, for we had only gone a short distance into the forest before we found a couple of avahis, sitting together in a tangle of creepers, their eyes glowing in our light beams. However, if finding them had been easy, darting them was a different matter, for the floodlight cast numerous flickering shadows, and the avahis themselves were anything but co-operative. They were not afraid of us, but were very lively and kept leaping from tree to tree. Nevertheless after several abortive shots Roland finally darted one, and very soon it was in our hands. It was a charming creature, about the size of a large domestic cat, with dense grey-green fur, a pale-grey belly, a russet-coloured tail and a grey mask on its face from which its eyes stared like two golden guineas. It had a very rounded head, accentuated by the fact that its neat little ears were buried in the deep fur of its head. Again I was amazed at the beautifully adapted hands and feet and, above all, at their silky softness. You would think that creatures who spend their time leaping and running through trees with rough bark, would have hands which were calloused and rough instead of being infinitely softer than any baby’s bottom. Soon the avahi, with its collar on, was back in the forest and we left him to his nightly activities.
It was a pity that our time was limited in Ankarafantsika, but we were to press on for there were many other fascinating and bizarre areas of Madagascar we wanted to visit and many other strange creatures to meet.
6. Nosy Kombo and the Crocodile Dance
Without doubt one of the driest, most inimical and most fantastic
habitats I have ever seen delicate-looking animals living in was the great thorny forest area of southern Madagascar. Firstly, of course, it is not forest in the accepted sense of the word, for it is made up of several gigantic plants found only in Madagascar and all resembling in some ways the cacti of other parts of the world. The chief species of the forest (Alluaudia procera) has a thick trunk from which fountains upward a series of long, whippy, green fingers that grow to a height of some seventy-five feet. Each of these astonishing rubbery limbs is covered with small, circular, fleshy green leaves the size of your thumb-nail. These grow in rows round and round the limbs, and between each leaf is set a long, needle-sharp pine, an inch long and as tough as steel. The ground underneath the lethal canopy has a number of other low-growing species, each armed with its own carefully evolved battery of spikes. There is one delightful species that looks like a round length of green plastic tubing, jointed together and bestrewn with spokes. The plant looks tough but breaks easily, exuding a white, milky substance which can blind you if it gets in your eyes. This weird green landscape was the sort of forest that a science fiction writer would locate on some remote planet like Mars or Venus. You would not think that such creatures as lemurs could have adapted to live in such a malevolent green-barbed-wire entanglement, but they have.
We drove out to a little cattle township called Hazofotsy over a bone-splintering road. After travelling through the Malagasy countryside we had been used to, we were suddenly, without warning, plunged into the thorny forest. The rutted road ran through the series of alluaudias, which lifted their admonishing prickly fingers to the sky, their thorns glittering like amber needles in the sun, their rows of tiny, fleshy leaves looking jade-green against the hot blue sky. We had driven, I suppose, some six or seven miles into this weird forest when, slowing down to avoid a particularly large pothole, we heard a gruff, chanting cry that sounded familiar. We stopped and got onto the dusty road. It sounded just like the cry of the sifaka, but surely, I thought to myself, such a dainty acrobatic and arboreal mammal could not exist here. But I was wrong. Quietly I picked my way into the dim, thorny interior and then passed beneath a huge alluaudia that looked the sort of plant the Spanish Inquisition would have designed, and waited for the animals to call again. After waiting, talking in whispers for some ten minutes, I happened to glance directly above us and found to my embarrassment that squatting in the branches six feet over our heads was a troop of six snow-white sifakas, regarding us with interest from large golden eyes. Incredibly they clung to the large spiky branches without any apparent discomfort, and when they saw that we had spotted them, they made off in a series of prodigious bounds, landing hard enough on the alluaudia branches to bend them over and paying no more attention to the spikes than if they had been constructed of rubber. I have seen a great many animals in many parts of the world cope with a hazardous habitat but never anything to compare with this.
We drove on, and towards evening we came to the dusty, tumble-down cluster of huts and corrals that was Hazofotsy. We camped a little away from the village on the banks of a small dried-up stream bed. The following morning when we awoke, the chief of the settlement came to visit us, bringing a bottle of fresh warm zebu milk for our breakfast. Then we set off to explore the forest, and before long we came across another of its inhabitants. It was Lee who spotted the nest of leaves wedged in a thorny vine-covered cleft between alluaudia branches. She found a long thornless twig and gently touched the nest with it, and the next moment there appeared two diminutive and adorable-looking creatures, smaller than newly born kittens. Their fur was pale ash grey, so that their long furry tails looked like delicate plumes of smoke. They had transparent ears of pink-grey, enormous liquid brown eyes, and dainty little hands and feet. They were mouse lemurs, the smallest of the Primates—three of them could have fitted comfortably into an average teacup and still have left enough room for a couple of lumps of sugar. They scrambled up on top of their house and stared down at us with huge eyes, looking like very Lilliputian owls. Then, deciding we might be potentially dangerous, they fled through the forest like miniature ballet dancers, leaping and pirouetting with uncanny skill, like someone dancing through a room full of rapiers. Later we found several more of these leaf nests, but none of them were inhabited.
At one point in the forest we found and photographed a strange species of tortoise, the spider tortoise. This strange beast has the scales of the rim of its shell protruding in spikes, so it fitted in very well with the thorny forest background. In places there were clearings among the armoured ranks of the alluaudia, and here grew baobab trees. This is one of the most unusual and endearing trees in Madagascar, with an immense pot-bellied silver trunk and a silly little cluster of minute twisted branches covered with green leaves that looked Iike a very badly designed and inadequate wig on a very large woman. Madagascar has nine species of this rotund and ridiculous-looking tree, whereas Africa has only one. In parts of the forest we found baobab corpses, trees that have been felled and their pot-bellies split open so that cattle could mumble and chew the trunk to extract water that was stored in it. Seeing the carcasses of these giant trees was very depressing, for they had taken centuries to grow and were felled in a day to provide maybe a few bucketsful of water for the ever-present and destructive zebu. Moreover this was one of Madagascar’s largest reserves, where tree felling was forbidden, as was the grazing of cattle. But when we discovered that this vast reserve was policed (if one can use that term) by one man who lived 30 miles away and had no transport to patrol the reserve with, we were not surprised that the local people treated the area with scant respect. Looking at the living baobabs, their tummies the circumference of a small room, their idiotic little branches twisted against the sky, I was reminded of the African folk-tale that relates how once the baobab was as other trees, but then it offended God, and so He, in His wrath, plucked it from the soil and replanted it upside down. That is why the baobab has such spindly branches, for they are really roots.
As night fell the forest was full of the noise of insects and the pulsating greenish light of fireflies. It was then we heard the weird, eldritch screech of yet another species of lemur, the strictly nocturnal lepilemur. Roland wanted to trap one of these creatures so that he could put a radio collar on it and study its movements, but in the thorny forest it was difficult to move around and get a clear shot with the dart gun, so we were forced to use other methods. We were joined by two stalwart young hunters from Hazofotsy armed with long poles to the end of which were attached nooses of string. By this means the Malagasay have been trapping lepilemurs since time immemorial. We set off with our torches and made our way through the forest, our light beams illuminating the strange alluaudia fronds, so that it seemed as if we were making our way through some deep dark pond with a monstrous weed growth. We could hear the lepilemurs screeching all around us, and it was not long before our hunters had spotted one, its eyes gleaming red in our torch beams. While we dazzled it with our lights they edged their poles nearer and nearer to the hypnotised creature and then slipped a noose over its head. A firm tug, and there was the animal, the noose around its neck, clinging to the pole and protesting at this treatment with a series of harsh, ear-splitting screams that made one’s blood run cold. Quickly they lowered it to the ground where Roland deftly put the radio collar on. Within a couple of minutes we had released the creature and it bounded away through the alluaudias as sure-footedly as if it had been broad daylight, uttering moaning shrieks at the indignity we had made it suffer.
I had examined the lepilemur in the torch light, of course, but this is never the best light for seeing the colours of an animal, and so I was delighted when, the following day, Roland came across a lepilemur in an accessible place and managed to dart it to put a collar on. This gave me the chance of examining it with care. It was about half the size of a large cat and its soft grey fur was so dense that it looked as though it had been clipped. The pale ears were set close in the fur of th
e head and the eyes were enormous and marigold-yellow in colour, slightly protuberant. The thumbs on both its hands and feet were widely opposed to the forefingers, thus giving maximum gripping power, and the delicate tips of each finger were pressed out into small circular discs that looked like suckers. These soft pads, of course, were the braking mechanism. When the animal hurled itself from one tree to another, these pads acted as a brake as it landed. A curious but not obvious thing about the lepilemur is its enormous caecum—the part of the stomach—small in human beings—from which the appendix grows. Owing to its fibrous diet of alluaudia leaves the lepilemur’s caecum is enormous compared to the size of a human’s. In fact if a human had a caecum proportionately as big, you could truthfully say he or she had the equivalent of three stomachs in one.
After a fascinating few days spent in this unbelievably harsh but beautiful terrain, we moved northward to pay a visit to an area that could not have been more different, the lush tropical island of Nosy Komba which lay in the brilliant blue sea off the northwest coast of Madagascar. We were particularly anxious to visit Nosy Komba not simply because it was an island, but because it was the home of a special species of lemur which was sacred to the islanders, as many species of lemur in Madagascar had been at one time, and thus earning themselves immunity from persecution. Now unfortunately, most of the beliefs in the lemurs’ magical powers have died out, except in remote places such as this island.