Etymology and Taxonomic History
The Philippine tarsier is related to the Horsfield's tarsier of Borneo and Sumatra and to several species of tarsier on Sulawesi and nearby islands in the genus Tarsius. Although all living tarsiers are conventionally placed in the single genus Tarsius, Shekelle and Groves (2010) proposed to place the distinctive Philippine tarsier in its own genus, Carlito.
The Philippine tarsier has been called "the world's smallest monkey" or "smallest primate" by locals before. It is related to other primates, including monkeys, lemurs, gorillas and humans but it occupies a small evolutionary branch between the strepsirrhine prosimians, and the haplorrhine simians. While it is a prosimian, and used to be grouped with the rest of the prosimians, it has some phylogenetic features that caused scientists to classify it as a haplorrhine and, therefore, more closely related to apes and monkeys than to the other prosimians.
The smallest primate is the Madame Berthe's Mouse Lemur (Microcebus berthae), at around one third the weight this species. The superlative 'smallest monkey' often refers to the Pygmy Marmoset (Cebuella pygmaea), an animal with a larger body size. The Philippine tarsier is considered to be the mammal with the biggest eyes, 16 mm across, in proportion to its body size.
The Philippine tarsier was only introduced to Western biologists in the 18th century through the description given to J. Petiver by the missionary J.G. Camel of an animal said to have come from the Philippines. Petiver published Camel's description in 1705 and named the animal Cercopithecus luzonis minimus which was the basis for Linnaeus' (1758) Simia syrichta and eventually Carlito syrichta, the scientific name it is known at present. Among the locals, the tarsier is known as "mamag", "mago", "magau", "maomag", "malmag" and "magatilok-iok".
Three subspecies are presently recognized: Carlito syrichta syrichta from Leyte and Samar, C. s. fraterculus from Bohol and C. s. carbonarius from Mindanao. The IUCN taxonomic notes lists two subspecies but that the non-nominate one is poorly defined at present, so the species is treated as a whole. Tarsius syrichta carbonarius and Tarsius s. fraterculus: Hill (1955) recognized these taxa as weakly defined subspecies. Niemitz (1984) found the differences to be insignificant based upon comparisons with museum specimens. Musser and Dagosto (1987) felt that the available museum specimens were insufficient to resolve the issue, but mentioned that Heaney felt that a single male tarsier from Dinagat might be distinct. Groves (2001) did not recognize any subspecies of T. syrichta, but Groves and Shekelle (2010) recognized the subspecies fraterculus, syrichta, and carbonarius when splitting the species out of Tarsius into Carlito.
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