Erica Szabo, age 11, of Winston Salem, North Carolina, for her question:
What is an angwantibo?
Some say that his odd name was borrowed from a West African word for pussycat. In any case, the angwantibo has other oddities besides his name. Though he is a monkey type animal, he has no tail worth mentioning. His feet grip somewhat like a parrot's. In general, he is a charming little ball of fur, very, very rare and quite mysterious in his ways.
The angwantibo is at home among the tall trees of Africa, in a small area between the Congo and Niger Rivers. But until the 1869, almost nobody knew he was there. He was not noticed again until the 1930s and at last, in 1948, an angwantibo was captured and shipped to the London Zoo. Nowadays, a few of his relatives live pampered lives in several of the world's great zoos.
He is classed among the sophisticated order of Primate animals, along with man, the monkeys, the lemurs and the great apes. He belongs in the loris family of furry mammals, which also includes the charming bush babies. If he lived in Madagascar, had monkey type hands and a monkey type tail, he would pass for one of the lemurs.
He looks a lot like a thickly furred pussycat with a rather foxy nose. His rounded ears are furless and his big hazy eyes tell us that the angwantibo has the sort of vision that sees best after sunset. You would not notice the bit of stubby tail concealed in fur, but you would notice his extra large thumbs and big toes. These odd hands and feet make it possible for the angwantibo to hold onto the boughs with an unshakable grip.
All of his life is spent in the jungle trees. During the day he squats on a bough, gripping with his hands and feet bunched together, or he may sleep hanging upside down. As a rule, he is busy at dawn and dusk searching for fruits and caterpillars. Though the angwantibo is related to the rather lazy lorises, he is a frisky little fellow and quite an acrobat. When he wants to go back along a bough, he turns a sort of somersault without letting go.
When provided with a very special home in a zoo, the angwantibo adjusts quite happily to captivity. But nobody knows a great deal about how he lives in his native home. After all, few people manage to penetrate his African jungles and when they do, they are not likely to see him. He can be spotted, if at all, only high in shadowy boughs in the dim light of dawn and dusk. Besides which, the angwantibo happens to be one of the rarest of all animals.
By observing the little stranger in captivity, we know that the female bears one baby at a time. The little angwantibo is only one and a half inches long. He is almost furless and for the first day his eyes are shut tight. In a few weeks, he has his thick fur coat and his bright eyes are big and round. He goes where his mother goes, at first clinging to the fur of her tummy. Later he becomes bold enough to ride clinging to her back.