Feast your eyes on perhaps the cutest cannibal in the animal kingdom.
The gray mouse lemur is featured in a new study in the American Journal of Primatology, which describes what may be the first case of adult cannibalism in this species and possibly of any nonhuman primate species, the report said.
“It has been thought that primate cannibalism only occurs in the context of infant eating, and adults do not consume the flesh of other adults,” according to the report, which comes on the heels of bizarre cannibal behavior among humans.
The researcher collared a sample of lemurs in the Kirindy forest of western Madagascar in late 2010.
In a surprising discovery, an adult male lemur was found chomping away for 20 minutes on an adult female found hanging from vegetation.
The victim, already missing its internal organs, was one of the lemurs being tracked.
“The corpse was known to be fresh since the individual had been seen active earlier and when the body was recovered, rigor mortis had not yet set in,” the study found.
The researcher, however, wasn’t convinced that the supposed Hannibal Lectur of lemurs actually killed the female because they tend to be more dominate.
Nonetheless, it’s an astonishing finding because the gray mouse lemur, also known as Microcebus murinus, “has not been previously observed to eat mammalian flesh,” the study said.
In general, it would be difficult to record widespread cannibalism among the species because they’re nocturnal and some feeding would also occur inside their nests, according to the research.
So why would these bug-eyed creatures potentially be interested in eating their own kind?
The study said one cause could be “nutritional stress.”
“The event I witnessed occurred in a season when the food availability is low and, on the other hand, the coinciding mating season may present additional energy demands,” the report said.
Lemurs typically nosh on vegetation and insects, so more research would be needed to determine whether lemur cannibalism is a growing phenomenon, according to the study.
The May 23, 2012 study, by Anni Hämäläinen, is titled “A Case of Adult Cannibalism in the Gray Mouse Lemur, Microcebus murinus. American Journal of Primatology.”
