The indri is the largest of the lemurs.
You’re tramping a forest trail in Madagascar’s Périnet National Park, when a siren-like wail rises from the greenery ahead, stopping you in your tracks. It’s the territorial call of the indri, the largest lemur. Others join in, their unearthly lament piercing the dawn and drifting away across the canopy.
This haunting song would seem to explain why lemurs were named after the ‘lemures’ (or ‘ghosts’) of Ancient Roman mythology. In fact, ‘lemur’ was first applied to the slender loris, a small primate from southern Asia. But the two animals are closely related, both belonging to the strepsirrhine primates — a quite distinct group from the anthropoid primates, which comprise monkeys and apes, including us.