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Tarsier, The Tiny Philippine Primate Threatened by Tourism

A very peculiar small animal you'll find indigenous in the Philippines is the Philippine tarsier, or scientifically known as Tarsius syrichta. In fact it is one of the smallest known primates, no larger than an adult men's hand. It lives on a diet of insects and mostly active at night. Folk traditions sometimes has it that tarsiers eat charcoal, but actually they retrieve the insects from (sometimes burned) wood. It can be found in the islands of Samar, Leyte, Bohol, and Mindanao. In their few numbers left, the tarsier might not survive if no action is taken. Although it is a protected species, and the practice of catching them and then selling them as stuffed tarsiers to tourists has stopped, the species is still threatened by the destruction of his natural forest habitat. Many years of both legal and illegal logging and slash-and-burn agriculture have greatly reduced these forests, and reduced the tarsier population to a dangerously small size. The Philippine tarsier can s