Word: tarsier
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Primates are being threatened everywhere in the world, but Asia takes the 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...
...dropped out of the trees only a few million years ago. The common ancestor, if there was one, now appears to have lived far earlier. This might be a kind of primate with mixed monkey and ape traits, or even an ancestor of the imp-eyed little Asian tarsier, which was a groundling before it took to the trees; anatomically, man has much in common with such animals. If Hurzeler's 4-ft. creature is what he says it is, the earliest manlike creature yet discovered, man may be many times older than he thinks...
...There are passages in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Latin, and a bastard tongue called Talkie-talkie; phrases like "non, ce n'etait pas moi" (French) and 'nihongo wa wakarimasu ka (Japanese, perhaps) go untranslated; and even when he keeps to English, Mr. Sack uses words like tarsier, euphoria, and hematemesis. The reader might well ask: what is Mr. Sack trying to hide? The answer can be found in chapter 19, if one has the idleness or stamina to read that far. We quote...
...dogs from Frankfurt, Germany and 97 reptiles from London, including twelve adders, three asps, four viperine snakes, 50 slowworms and two sandboas. On another plane from the Philippines, en route to The Bronx Zoo, came eleven tree shrews, three monkey-eating eagles, 14 giant cloud rats and 30 tarsiers. The tarsier (TIME, March 3), an insect-eating cousin of the monkey, is smaller than a squirrel, weighs only half a pound, has long fingers tipped by adhesive discs. Banjo-eyed is no word for a tarsier; its brown orbs suggest bass drums, at least...
...Thanks to two jungle-trotting G.I.s you may soon get a look at a strange creature from Mindanao called a tarsier...