Northern sportive lemur have large bacteria-filled ceca, which helps them to digest plant matter such as cellulose and break it down into sugars and starches. The northern sportive lemur is preyed on by the native Malagasy tree boa, which hunts the lemurs while they are sleeping in tree holes. Large birds of prey, Falconiformes and Strigiformes, are also natural predators of the lemurs. Along with these ecological threats, the arboreal lemur species are also highly threatened by human charcoal production, which still continues to remove the only remaining forest habitat of the lemurs, greatly restricting their range. "L. septentrionalis" is also illegally hunted
Human uses of birds birds, while John James Audubon's enormous and impressive images of birds in his 1827–1838 "Birds of America" are among the most admired by art critics and by collectors: early editions fetch among the highest prices paid for any printed books. The ornithologist John Gould's bird illustrations, in books such as "A Century of Birds hitherto unfigured from the Himalaya Mountains" (1830–1833) with 80 plates, and his 7-volume "The Birds of Australia" (1840–1848) with 600 plates, related directly to his research, were both beautiful and scientifically useful. Birds are popular characters in children's books, which are often handsomely illustrated. Beatrix Potter's