I just learned today that the mouse lemur has a distinctive palette... for sugar.
This was just one of the tidbits in Adam Gopnik's article, Sweet Revolution (Notes of a Gastronomy), the power of the pastry chef, in the January 3, 2011 New Yorker.
Here's the NYer article -
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/03/110103fa_fact_gopnik
Here's a quote -
"I sat in my little hotel room in Barcelona, jet-lagged and sugar-satiated, and read about the history of sugar. Primates, I learned, love sweets for reasons that are simple enough to explain: sweetness is the natural sign of ripeness, and the best assurance, especially when balanced with just enough acids, that the thing you’re eating is good to eat. Yet the picture is more complex. The primate instinct for sugar is particular, adjustable, and sometimes seasonal. The lesser mouse lemur of Madagascar, a gourmand among monkeys, raises its threshold during the rainy season so that, when sugars are less abundant, it requires less sweetness. Yet this may be why the lesser mouse lemur has always remained so deeply lesser. Our nearest relations among the primates, particularly chimps, have a “supra threshold”: they love sweets and will practically die to get them—and this, the theory goes, is one of the things that make them forage over extremely large territories, outside the forest. They strolled on all fours, then walked, then ran, just to have dessert."
Here's a mouse lemur -
This is a gray one. I've no idea if it is a Lesser Mouse Lemur.
Quoting the website,
"The Gray Mouse Lemur is a small lemur that is only found in Madagascar. It was first described by John Frederick Miller in 1777. Although it only weighs a mere 58 to 67 grams, it is the largest mouse lemur in the world. However, it also belongs to the genus Microcebus which includes the world’s smallest primates."
Read more:
http://www.itsnature.org/ground/mammals-land/gray-mouse-lemur/#ixzz1ABzL1sOR
