What Is a Tarsier?

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Primates

Family: Tarsiidae

Common Name: Philippine Tarsier

What is a tarsier? Tarsiers are the smallest species of monkeys, and wholly carnivores. They have enormous eyes, a long tail, pads at the ends of each of their fingers and toes and, have big round ears that help them hunt better. These pads let them climb very well. Their large eyes are excellent at seeing at night. These animals are nocturnal, which means that they hunt and stay awake at night and sleep in the day.

Its scientific name is Tarsius. Order is Oligocene Epoch primate. Genus is Tarsius. Family is Tarsiidae. Species are the Philippines Tarsier, Western Tarsier, and the Spectral Tarsier. Its common name is obviously the Tarsier.

You find a tarsier in the islands of the Philippines including Mindanao, Letye, Samar and Bohol. They also live in the lowlands of Sulawesi, Indonesia and in the island of Southeast Asia.

Tarsiers range from about 6 inches in height not including the tail. They weigh between 3 & 4 oz (85 & 110 grams). Their length including the tail is about 16 inches.

Tarsiers become sexually matured at the age of one. Their breeding period goes throughout the year. A female’s gestation period is about six months. Each female tarsier can only bear one young at a time.

Their life span goes about 8 years or more depending on where they are living. A tarsier’s diet consists of eating insects, lizards, worms, and other very small animals. Tarsiers seem to be insectivorous and carnivorous. They drink several times each night. Prey is caught invariably by leaping at it, pinning it down by one or both hands, and killing or at least immobilizing it by several bites. The victim, often caught on the ground, is carried in the mouth to a perch, where it is eaten head first.

For the head-hunting Iban people of Borneo, the tarsiers once played an important role as a totem animal. Since the head of this small, nocturnal primate was believed to be loose. This belief stemmed from the extra-ordinary capability for rotation of the tarsier’s neck vertebrae. The crucial systematic position of the tarsiers, between other prosimians and monkeys, make them relevant to many problems of primate evolution.

The female tarsiers have multiple breast pairs, but only one pair is functional. The tarsiers’ coat is softer than velvet. They can also turn their head almost 360 degrees. A single young is born fully furred and with its eyes open. It can climb around the first day of its life. Tarsiers have needle sharp teeth. You might not want to get cut with that! Each of a tarsier’s eyes weighs the same of its whole brain, larger than its stomach. And also tarsiers cannot walk on land; they hop when they are on the ground.

The owl, the aye-aye, the galago, the monkeys, the apes, the prosimians, the anthropoids, the lemurs and, people are all related species to the tarsier.

Only the tarsier has a postorbital plate behind each eye. This feature keeps the eyeballs from being pressed against by the powerful temporal muscles to their sides.

Even the tarsiers sound like they live in peace, but they don’t. Two main factors over the years that have reduced the population of tarsiers are the destruction