HABITS.--The habits of the different species of Sifaka are very similar. They live in companies of six or eight, and are very gentle and inoffensive animals, wearing always a most melancholy expression, and, as a rule, being morose, inactive, and more silent than other Lemurs. They rarely live long in captivity. In their native state they are most alert in the morning and evening, as during the heat of the day they conceal themselves amid the foliage of the trees. When asleep or in repose, the head is dropped on the chest and buried between the arms, the tail rolled up on itself and disposed between the hind-legs. The Sifakas live exclusively on vegetable substances--leaves, fruits and flowers--their diet not being varied, as in the other groups, by small birds, eggs, or insects. Their life is almost entirely arboreal, for which the muscles of their hands and feet, as well as the parachute-like fold of skin between their arms and body, and their peculiarly hook-like fingers, are most fitted. The young one is carried about by its mother on her back, its hands grasping her arm-pits tightly. The Sifakas are held in great veneration or fear by the natives of Madagascar, and are never intentionally killed by them.
_Indris_, Cuv. et Geoffr., Mag. Encycl., 2 ed. Ann. i., p. 46 (1796); Milne-Edwards and Grandid., Hist. Nat. Madag., Mamm., i., p. 330 (with full synonymy).
This genus is, like the first of the sub-family, monotypic, no second species having rewarded the many explorers of Madagascar in the long period that has elapsed since its solitary species was discovered. This species is known as
_Indris brevicaudatus_, Geoffr., Mag. Encycl., 2 ed. Ann., p. 46 (1796).
_Indris variegatus_, Gray, Ann. and Mag. N. H. (4), x., p., 474 (1872).
_Indris brevicaudatus_, Milne-Edwards and Grandid., Hist. Nat. Madag., Mamm., i., p. 336 (with full synonymy), Atlas, pls. xi.-xii.
CHARACTERS.--The peculiar features of the species, as given below, are necessarily those of the genus also.
Fur long and woolly, extremely variable in its coloration. Head rounded, longer than it is broad; muzzle moderately long, covered with very short hairs; fingers and toes haired to the finger-tips; external ears rounded, exserted, and more developed than in _Avahis_ or _Propithecus_, with long and tufted { 106}hair forming a fringe all round. Median nose-pad high and narrow; pupil of eye circular; body elongated; arms about one quarter of the length of the legs; hands very long, the four outer fingers united by a membrane as far as the first joint, and the toes to the centre of their middle segments; hands and feet haired to the tips. Tail rudimentary.