Lemurs act male to avoid confrontations: 25-07-2008
It has been revealed that lemurs are quick to embrace their male sides when faced with potential danger.
According to a study by the University of Gottingen's German Primate Centre, the female red-fronted creatures in Madagascar develop more typically male colouration when some of the other females become aggressive in bouts of sexual competition, National Geographic reports.
While the coats of female lemurs take a cinnamon hue and they develop a white crown around seven to 17 weeks old, they are able to change this to ward off older females.
Alison Jolly, a primatologist at the University of Winchester, commented on the findings, saying: "Most of their social life is cuddling and grooming, [but] once in a long while females viciously throw other females out of the group, or more rarely, they have been seen to kill and actually eat another animals' infants."
Lemurs are unique to the island of Madagascar and are known to display some very unusual behaviour, including moving like a ballerina across the sands and singing like a whale, Wild Madagascar reports.