Madagascar Mysteries

Dr. Karl Shuker has an excellent new post at his Shuker Nature blog on the mystyerious creatures of Madagascar.

As Karl says:

"The fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar is a veritable miniature continent, brimming with extraordinary animals found nowhere else in the world, including such exotic avifauna as vangas and neodrepanidids, remarkable reptiles that include boas more closely-related to counterparts in South America than to any Old Word snakes plus the world’s greatest diversity of chameleons, and, most famous of all, its wonderful assemblage of lemurs and exotic striped civets. Yet as if all of these were not exciting enough, only a few centuries ago in some cases this zoological treasure trove of endemics also boasted some truly astonishing animals – and none more so than its impressive number of giant lemurs far bigger than anything known to exist today. Today, of course, these creatures are long gone – or are they? Read this investigation of Madagascar’s most astonishing mystery beasts – and decide for yourself."

And here's the rest of Karl's post, which is a great read.