Word: madagascar
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...animals' fleas. Scientists know which regions of the world harbor infected animals, but they are only just beginning to understand the dynamics of plague infection. Its spread depends not just on Yersinia pestis but also on interactions among rodents and, crucially, on contact between humans and wildlife. Madagascar is a good example. For decades, plague was restricted to the highlands, according to a 2004 paper by researchers in Madagascar, Senegal and France. But it showed up on the coast in 1991, when the Asian shrew somehow picked up infected fleas. The plague's earlier comeback in the inland capital, Antananarivo...
...MADAGASCAR...
...many as a quarter of all prescription drugs today are linked to the kinds of indigenous discoveries that make Brazilian catuaba bark a rain-forest version of Viagra for the herbal-supplement crowd. Two of Eli Lilly's more successful cancer drugs, Velban and Oncovin, were developed from Madagascar's rosy periwinkle plant, found through a shaman some 40 years ago. In the 1990s the two cancer drugs produced combined sales of $100 million a year. In September, Lilly, based in Indianapolis, Ind., agreed to pay up to $325 million to join San Diego's Amylin Pharmaceuticals in developing...
...lead this year with 11 endangered species, including the Sumatran orangutan, Siau Island tarsier and Hainan black-crested gibbon. Africa's seven endangered primates include the Cross River gorilla and Miss Waldron's red colobus, which scientists have not spotted since 1993 and fear may already be extinct. Madagascar follows with four endangered species, while South America has three. From Colombia to Southern China, primates are not faring well, and primatologists say their precarious existence is a problem for all of us. Even if we have never set eyes on a Peruvian yellow-tailed woolly monkey before, the species' well...
...cats. In others, they lend a hand to the local flora by eating plants and dribbling seeds around. Primates are certainly crucial to the global food chain, but as Nadler says, it's hard to know what would happen to the larger environment if a few lemur species on Madagascar died off tomorrow - and it's a question that scientists have been working for decades to avoid having to answer. In the last 50 years, only a few primates have been lost to extinction, but some worry the worst is yet to come. "The great fear is that...