BEARS do it. Squirrels do it. And now we know a primate that does it too. Hibernate, that is. The Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur is the first known primate, and the first tropical mammal, to display such behaviour, which helps it survive the Madaga scan winter curled up in tree holes.
Kathrin Dausmann and her colleagues at the University of Marburg in Germany have found that, unlike temperate hibernators, the lemurs cannot regulate their body temperature. If the lemur鈥檚 tree holes are poorly insulated, the animal鈥檚 body temperature can fluctuate with the ambient temperature by a more than 20 掳C each day, ranging from 9 掳C to 36 掳C. (Nature, vol 429, p 825).
