This week I did a lecture on primate diversity for the Human Origins class which I TA for. Since I don't know much about primates, I had to do my own little crash course. If there's any sort of contest going on for "weirdest primate ever", I nominate the tarsier, a prosimian indigenous to the Philippines and other islands off the coast of SE Asia.
This little dude is FREAKY! Mostly because of the huge eyes, I think. Each one of the tarsier's eyes is roughly the same size as its brain. If our eyes were proportional to the tarsier's eyes, they would be the size of grapefruits. Also, the eyes are fixed in place- tarsiers can't look from side to side without moving their heads! To compensate for this, they can rotate their heads around 180 degrees, just like owls can.
Also, look at the prehensile hands and feet, with their long skinny digits. They remind me of Gollum. Well adapted for an arboreal environment, or for strangling hobbitses in their sleep. *shudder*
This is a tarsier's skull- it's pretty much all eyesockets. So weird.Tarsiers are small, about the size of a human hand. They mostly eat bugs. Check out this video of a tarsier chowing down a cricket- it's like watching a possessed Furbie.
Have any of you ever seen a tarsier in real life? What's your opinion of them? Are they as freaky as they seem on the Interwebs?
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