Tarsier

Fascinating facts about the Tarsier

• A tarsier's eye is about 16 mm across, making it as big as, or even larger than, its whole brain. This extraordinary size forces the skull to be specially balanced so the animal can sit motionless while waiting for prey. The head can swivel a full 180° each way, giving the tarsier a complete 360° visual sweep without moving its body. Together, these adaptations let the tiny primate spot and ambush insects in the dim forest understory.
• Tarsiers are the only living primates that eat only meat, relying almost entirely on insects that they catch by leaping from branch to branch. They also take opportunistic prey such as small flying frogs, lizards and even crabs that wander onto lower tree trunks. Their favourite meals are arthropods - beetles, cockroaches, grasshoppers, katydids, cicadas and walking sticks - which they snatch in mid-air with astonishing speed.
• Philippine tarsiers can hear sounds up to 91 kHz, a frequency far beyond human hearing, which helps them detect the ultrasonic calls of insects and other tiny prey. Their own calls are equally high-pitched, with a dominant frequency around 70 kHz, allowing communication that is hard for predators to locate. These extreme auditory abilities complement their large eyes, making them superb nocturnal hunters.
• When a predator approaches, a tarsier emits a warning call. Within moments, two to ten neighbours converge to harass the threat, mobbing it together.
• A tarsier can swivel its head 180° to either side. This rotation grants it an uninterrupted 360° field of view, letting it scan the surroundings without moving its body.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Tarsier

In the twilight depths of the forest, a tarsier stirs, its enormous eyes glowing like lanterns in the darkness as it embarks on a nocturnal hunt, its slender fingers and toes barely making a whisper as it navigates the delicate web of branches. With a gentle, almost ethereal movement, it turns its head, the eyes swiveling in their sockets to drink in the faint sounds and scents of the night, its very presence a testament to the magic that still lingers in these forgotten corners of the natural world. As it leaps from tree to tree, its long legs unfolding like a ghostly apparition, the tarsier becomes one with the shadows, a fleeting glimpse of a creature that has remained largely unchanged for millennia.

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