It looks like a tangerine-sized cross between a furry Furby and a gremlin, and hadn't been seen alive since the 1920s. But the pygmy tarsier has made an unlikely comeback.
Scientists believed these tiny primates, weighing less than two ounces, were extinct until researchers recently found some in the mountaintop forests of Indonesia.
"Finding them on this mountaintop really clarified for me at least that they are a distinct species and they're not extinct. But they are threatened," said Sharon Gursky-Doyen, an associate professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University, who returned home a couple of weeks ago.
In the hunt for pygmy tarsiers, scientists had returned to the location in Sulawesi where they were last tagged. But Prof. Gursky-Doyen decided to expand her search in August to a neighbouring mountaintop.
The climb was treacherous. She broke her fibula or calf bone, and her field assistants were slipping and falling as much as she was.
Once up the mountain, the team set up mist nets, a fine netting traditionally used to capture birds and bats. They monitored the nets hourly, because a bird or bat caught in them for more than an hour would die of hypothermia.
The expedition proved lucky. "I can think of four or five other people who have been out looking for tarsiers and set up mist nets and they're there and they didn't catch anything for a month or two. We caught one on our second night there," Prof. Gursky-Doyen said yesterday.
Over a 2½-month period, the team trapped two males and one female on Mount Rore Katimbo in Lore-Lindu National Park in central Sulawesi. Radio collars were attached to their necks so the scientists could track their movements.
Unlike the other Sulawesian tarsiers, the pygmy tarsier doesn't have white fur behind its ears, and it has fingers with claws instead of nails, which Prof. Gurksy-Doyen believes allows the creature to grip trees easily in a mossy environment. The nocturnal or crepuscular primate with its dense coat of fur eats insects.
It has huge eyes that protrude out of their sockets and it appears to have a perpetual smile on its face. Prof. Gursky-Doyen said the creatures can turn their heads 180 degrees.
She said discovering that they were not extinct was an exciting moment. "I thought: 'They exist. Oh my God, they exist. They're real,' " she said, adding that other primates still may be discovered.
It's not known how many pygmy tarsiers live in the mountains, but Prof. Gurksy-Doyen said it's imperative that the Indonesian government protect the creatures from encroaching development.
While the pygmy tarsier lives in a national park, about 60 villages of local Indonesians are also inside park boundaries. "The villages are getting closer and closer to this area, and they're going up the mountaintop. That is going to cause severe problems, if it hasn't already," Prof. Gursky-Doyen said.
"My hope is now that the Indonesian government recognizes where they are, that they're actually on this mountaintop, that they actually exist ... [it]will prohibit the locals from going up farther on this mountain, that they will actually have certain areas within the park that they will cut off from human exploitation."
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The shy primate
The pygmy tarsier, thought extinct, has been captured in a mountaintop cloud forest in Indonesia.
Over a two-and-a-half month period, the team trapped two males and one female on Mount Rore Katimbo in Lore-Lindu National Park. Radio collars were attached to their necks so the scientists could track their movements.
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Tarsius pumilus
Believed extinct since the 1920s, the pygmy tarsier is a rediscovered species of primate.
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*Weighs less than 60 grams
*Is a nocturnal or crepuscular primate
*Fur is dense to keep warm in a damp, chilly habitat
*Its eyes cannot move, so it turns its head to hunt
*Can leap almost three metres
*Eats live moving prey, such as insects and small vertebrates
*Unlike most other primates, it has claws instead of nails.
NINIAN CARTER/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
SOURCE: TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
Caroline Alphonso