A bush baby's legs outperform a frog's by up to nine times
Galagos, Africa's bush babies, can leap more than two metres from a standstill. A Royal Society study found their jumping muscles perform six to nine times better than a frog's should, thanks to tendons that store elastic energy like springs. Then they land on exactly the same branch, guided by their own scent trail.
Galagos are small nocturnal primates found across sub-Saharan Africa, forming the family Galagidae, a sister group to the lorises. The African Wildlife Foundation rates them the continent's most successful strepsirrhine primates in both variety and numbers. Their English nickname may come from their baby-like cries or their looks; in Afrikaans they are nagapies, night monkeys, and a Ghanaian name refers to their fierce grip on branches. Genetic work has recently reshuffled their classification, splitting the dwarf galagos into two separate lineages divided by the Rift Valley.
Their bodies are built for darkness. Huge eyes give strong night vision, and bat-like ears track insects, which they grab from the ground or snatch mid-air. They fold those delicate ears back when crashing through thick bush or resting. The reliably recorded jump record is 2.25 metres. In flight they tuck in their limbs, flinging them out at the last moment to seize a branch, and a tail longer than head and body together helps power each leap. They can also hop like kangaroos. Besides insects they eat small animals, fruit and tree gum, and a special grooming claw on one hind toe keeps their fur tidy.
Social life mixes company and solitude. Females share territories with their young, while males leave after puberty; a single adult male usually mates with all the females whose ranges overlap his. Each species has a distinctive set of loud calls, so reliable that scientists can identify every known species by ear, and at dawn a rallying call gathers the group into a nest of leaves or a tree hole.
Pregnancy lasts 110 to 133 days, and newborns weigh under 14 grams. Mothers carry them in their mouths and park them on branches while feeding. Captive galagos live 12 to 16.5 years. Folklore has cast them as child-snatching monsters, a legend probably inspired by that eerie, infant-like cry.
Source: Galago
