With climate change, social injustices, political issues, and everyone's own personal life, it can be hard to understand why saving animals that most people will never see in the wild is important. There is a vast amount of issues that are important coming into the spotlight in today's media. While a lot of material about conservation is out there, a good portion of it is in scientific articles or unknown websites. So, I present to you a case of why I think it's so important to save one if the most incredible animals out there.
Lemurs are astounding creatures that seem almost like something out of a storybook. They're not monkeys, but they do jump through the trees and dance across the ground. They're not cats, but they have the adorable appeal to them and amazing balance. Lemurs are not humans either, although some of them have so many human-like characteristics it's almost eery. Lemurs are not humans, but they have been on this planet much longer than we have and if we aren't careful, they will have no chance of being here after us.
Imagine yourself in the greenest forest you can picture, like something you've seen in a movie that you've long forgotten since you were a child. Looking around yourself at ground level, there's too many types of vegetation to count, even a few you never knew existed. There's a loud call somewhere near you, but you can't tell exactly where so you try your best to follow the echoing sound.
Just like you, another animal is tracing their way to the sound, but instead of being on your level, they're much higher up. Above you, an indri lemur leaps from tree to tree, extending his legs to propel himself a distance that seems impossible. You decide to follow him to the caller and soon you come upon a mother indri and her newborn clinging onto her back, waiting for her mate to come back.
In an ideal world, or perhaps before humans existed, this scenario would have a happy ending.
Maybe the family would move on from your encounter, not even noticing the human in their presence. Maybe the infant would learn how to be like her mother and grow to find a lifelong mate of her own. Perhaps a researcher encountered them instead of you and they document the number, where they are, and how healthy they appear to be.
But it's just as likely that instead of a researcher, a poacher found the family and used the parents for bushmeat and captured the newborn to sell into the pet trade. It's also completely possible that maybe the family never had the chance to exist at all due to the rapid decrease of the population of many lemurs.
So why should this matter to someone who may never see a wild lemur or may not have even known what a lemur was before this article? It matters because with the destruction of the habitats of lemurs comes the destruction of the earth we share. Less trees simply equals less oxygen for us to breathe. On top of that, less rainforest means a more unstable climate for the planet and everything on it. Aside from this, lemurs are some of the most ancient primates. Given this, they are one of humanity's oldest relatives that could give us a good insight into how the first ever primate looked and behaved.
Not only are lemurs important to understanding evolution, they are also living creatures. Lemurs feel pain, joy, love, and have families and lives. There is no reason that these magnificent creatures deserve to die, especially at the hands of creatures that tend to ruin most things that they touch. The lives of these amazing individuals deserve to be saved because once they're gone, there is no bringing them back.
