Behaviour
The red-bellied lemur aggregates in monogamous groups ranging from two to ten individuals. It is one of the few lemurs to be recognized as cathemeral, having both diurnal and nocturnal activity patterns. The home range is estimated to be 25 to 35 acres (10 to 14 ha) with a typical density of five animals per acre. Groups are typically cohesive as they move within their home range, foraging on over thirty species of plants. Considered by some to be a frugivore, it also feeds on leaves, nectar and flowers of many plant species; this lemur is believed to be a useful and efficient seed disperser.
A typical and maximum frequency of births is one offspring per female per year, with initial year infant mortality at about fifty percent. Births normally occur in October and November (early summer in this southern hemisphere habitat). The young use their prehensile instincts in order to attach to the mother and father alternately for the first 33 to 37 days of life. At this point the mother often refuses further transport services, whilst the father may continue to provide such for another nine weeks.
Read more about this topic: Red-bellied Lemur
Famous quotes containing the word behaviour:
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“I look on it as no trifling effort of female strength to withstand the artful and ardent solicitations of a man that is thoroughly master of our hearts. Should we in the conflict come off victorious, it hardly pays us for the pain we suffer from the experiment ... and I still persist in it that such a behaviour in any man I love would rob me of that most pleasing thought, namely, the obligation I have to him for not making such a trial.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)