Mongoose lemur Mongoose lemur The mongoose lemur ("Eulemur mongoz") is a small primate in the family Lemuridae, native to Madagascar and the Comoros Islands. These arboreal animals have pointed faces, long bushy tails, dark brown upper parts, pale bellies and a beard, which is reddish in males and white in females. They live in family groups and feed primarily on fruits, but also eat leaves, flowers and nectar, with nectar from the kapok tree making up a large part of their diet during the dry season. They have declined sharply in numbers because of habitat destruction and hunting, and the International Union
Sexual dimorphism in non-human primates to the likelihood of higher vulnerability to predators. Another hypothesis suggests that arboreal primates have limitations on their upper body size, given that larger body size could disrupt their usage of terminal branches for locomotion. However, among some species of guenons ("Cercopithecus"), arboreal blue monkeys ("C. mitis") appear to be more sexually dimorphic than terrestrial vervet monkeys ("C. aethiops"). It has been hypothesized that niche divergence between the sexes attributes to the evolution of size dimorphism in primates. Males and females are known to have different preferences for ecological habitat due to different reproductive activities, which could possibly lead to