Lemurs are cute little animals with a wide variety of sizes and colors. Most have very long tails provided by the Creator to help them keep their balance when jumping between high trees. The hind legs of most are longer than the front legs. Perky, upright ears and sharp eyes have also been provided to help them avoid their enemies.
Lemurs live in trees most of the time. Their strong legs, feet and clawed toes enable them to scamper around as nimbly as squirrels. They wrap their long tails around the branch of a tree to hang upside down while looking for food below them. They eat leaves of trees, fruit, berries, insects, flowers, bark and tree gum. Most of them find their food at night. Because the females are the leaders, if a male gets careless and eats food before his mate does, he is likely to get a hard slap from her.
Now let’s look more closely at a few varieties that live on the island of Madagascar. An unusually pretty one, with the ability to make long jumps, is the sifaka. It is named this because its calls sound like that word. Larger than most of the others, its body and tail are white with black on its neck and face and a jet-black skullcap on top. It usually lives in groups of six or more in a large tree. Strangely, this one has never been known to drink from a puddle or pool of water; it gets moisture by sipping dew from leaves. Unlike most of the others, the sifaka is active in daylight hours, perching on a large branch during the night to sleep. At daybreak it bursts out with loud calls that can be heard for a great distance.
Another lemur has the simple name brown lemur, because its coloring is brown. It has long, husky hind legs - more than twice the size of the front legs, and a bushy brown tail longer than the rest of its body.
Like all creatures, other than mankind, these pretty animals are not aware that the very One who created them is always caring for them. Psalm 36:67 tells us, “O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast. How excellent is thy loving-kindness, O God!” The same writer stated in another psalm, “O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker. For He is our God; and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand” (Psalm 95:67). How happy it must make His heart when a boy or girl does kneel down and worships Him with praise and thanksgiving!
ML-09/03/2006