The true lemurs are only found in Madagascar, where they are so numerous that two or three at least may be found in every little copse throughout the island.
The reason why that name has been given to them is this: Lemurs by the ancients were supposed to be ghosts which wandered about by night.
Earle, in the American Naturalist for 1897, observes that "so far as the palaeontological evidence goes it is decidedly in favour of the view that apes andlemurs are closely related.
In regard to Tarsius, it is evidently a type nearly between the lemurs and apes, but with many essential characters belonging to the former group.
It is, however, noteworthy that extinct lemurs occur in the Tertiary deposits of both halves of the northern hemisphere--a fact which has induced Dr J.
Our knowledge of fossil apes and lemurs has also become much wider and more exact since Darwin's time: the fossil lemurs have been especially worked up by Cope, Forsyth Major, Ameghino, and others.
This brings us to the order called Quadrumana or four-handed animals which include Lemurs and their allied forms, and manlike monkeys.
The lemurs and their allied forms make up the remaining families of the quadrumana.
In some of the Lemurs (Tarsius) a discoid placenta with decidua is developed.
In the bats and lemurs the "horns" are very short, and the lower common part is longer.
Next to the lemurs come the true apes (Simiae), the twenty-sixth stage in our ancestry.
Some of the lemurs (Brachytarsi) approach closely to the true apes.
The lemurs or half-apes are the stem-group, descending from the older Mallotheria of the Cretaceous period.
It has probably developed out of Semi-apes which were closely allied to the Long-footed Lemurs (Macrotarsi) of the present day.
This order probably also originated out of the Semi-apes, with which it is even at present closely allied, through the flying lemurs (Galeopithecus).
These are the Semi-apes, or Lemurs (Prosimiae); these curious animals are probably the but little changed descendants of the primaeval group of Placentalia which we have to consider as the common primary form of all Deciduata.
It is here implied that lemurs formerly inhabited Bourbon and Mauritius, but of this there is not a particle of evidence, and we feel pretty sure that had they done so the dodos would never have been developed there.
In the remote Eocene period the same temperate lands were inhabited by lemurs in the East, and by curious animals believed to be intermediate between lemurs and marmosets in the West.
Cuvier places them after the Bats, but they seem properly to link the Lemurs and the frugivorous Bats.
These are frugivorous bats of large size, differing, as remarked by Jerdon, so much in their dentition from the insectivorous species that they seem to lead through the flying Lemurs (Colugos) directly to the Quadrumana.
There is a curious link between the Lemurs and the Bats in the Colugos.
Again, if the race of lemurs developed from a single pair, how precarious seems our fate!
Professor Cope, "and its food was like that of the smaller Lemurs of Madagascar and the Malayan islands.
The foot in the Dwarf-Lemurs is long, on account of the elongation of two of its ankle-bones (the cuboid and the naviculare).
It spends the day rolled up very much as many of the Lemurs do.
The Lemurs comprised in the present Sub-family are divisible into two groups--those inhabiting the mainland of Africa and those confined to the island of Madagascar.
The hind portion of the cerebellum is large, which points to intellectual inferiority in the True Lemurs as compared with the Apes.
The True Lemurs are all inhabitants of Madagascar and of the adjacent Comoro Islands.
Its discovery was the first indication of Lemurs in the Miocene of the United States.
The Lemurs now living are divided into three families.
Zittel remarks, "a very characteristic element of the fauna; they are connected with old Tertiary fore-runners, and combine features of the existing Lemurs and true Apes.
It is disputed, for example, whether the Chriacidae among extinct Lemurs are rightly placed, or whether they should be referred to the Creodonta.
Like so many Lemurs this animal is held in superstitious dread, which no doubt is the result of its most weird appearance.
The colours of these Lemurs are bright, and distributed so as to form contrasting bands; thus P.
These Lemurs contrast with others by the large size of the hind- as compared with the fore-limbs.
As to osteology, the shape of the head, already referred to, indicates some of the differences in the skull which mark off the Lemurs from the Anthropoidea.
Perhaps the most remarkable difference between the Lemurs and the Anthropoidea, which are really in many respects more closely allied than might be inferred from the above summary of differences, is in the structure of the placenta.
Correlated with the first two of these characters, these Lemurs when upon the ground progress by means of the hind-limbs, holding their arms above their heads.
These Lemurs are said to be reverenced and therefore shielded from injury by the natives of Madagascar.
In other Lemurs there is no modified skin, but a small tuft of particularly long hairs, which are also present in Hapalemur, and a small gland beneath the skin.
Defn: Like or pertaining to the lemurs or the Lemuroidea.
During the summer months my lemurs much enjoy being in the open air, and on fine days they are tethered on the lawn, where they amuse my visitors with their graceful frolics.
When I offered food to theselemurs they had a curious way of obtaining it when not quite within their reach.
In consecrated earth And on the holy hearth The Lars and Lemurs moan with midnight plaint.
So the lemurs were accepted, and I sent a man to the other side of London to bring them, cage and all, with great care to their new home.
A family quarrel among lemurs must be a thing to remember.
Before long, when the two lemurs had become accustomed to each other, they were allowed to meet, and quickly became the greatest friends, playing together for hours and affording us constant amusement in watching their graceful gambols.
My greatest surprise in connection with the lemurs took place about two months after their arrival.
So abundant, indeed, are lemurs in Madagascar, that, according to M.
What, then, was my dismay when the lemurs arrived to find that they were packed in a small hamper, and that no cage had come with them, as it had been found too large to be conveyed by any cab or other sort of carriage.
Lemurs are inhabitants of the island of Madagascar, where they live in the woods, feeding on fruits.
The proportion of brain-case and face does not differ much from that in the lemurs and even lower forms like cats, for the brain has not increased greatly in total mass, though the cerebrum is more convoluted than in the lower forms.
Passing to the true anthropoids, or man-like primates and man himself, the first forms encountered are the little marmosets, which are like the lemurs in some ways, but in other respects they resemble the familiar tailed monkeys.
The lemurs are small animals very much like squirrels in their general form and in their tree-climbing habits.
Indeed, the name of primates was given to this section by Linnæus himself, because the human body found a place in the array which begins at the lower extreme with the lemurs and the monkeys and ends with man at the other end.
The foot resembles that of the other lemurs in its large opposable great toe with a flat nail; but all the other toes have pointed compressed claws.
In considering this question, the first fact to appear is that the apes and lemurs are plantigrade animals.
Whether the monkeys emerged from the lemurs or the two groups developed side by side is a question as yet unsettled; at all events they are closely similar in conditions of existence.
The same may be said of almost all tree-dwellers except the lemurs and apes.
The relation of the lemurs to the apes is not clearly defined.
The most distinguishing characteristic of the apes and of the nearly relatedlemurs has not hitherto been definitely pointed out.
Yet while the monkeys are the most intelligent and teachable of animals, the lemurs are among the least intelligent of the mammalia.
The same arrangement of the large intestine obtains in certain Lemurs among the Primates.
In the typical lemurs the caecum is long, frequently terminating in a pointed appendage.
Besides the Lemurs the group includes the aberrant Tarsius and Chiromys.
In most of the Cebidae and Lemurs an ent-epicondylar foramen occurs.
In the Lemurs the upper canines are large, and the lower incisors slender and directed almost horizontally forwards.
Harpyia cephalotes, Gray, Catalogue of monkeys, lemurs and fruit-eating bats in the British Museum, p.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "lemurs" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
