A FOOL FOR TARSIERS - Once ridiculed for his quest to save the Philippines' tiniest primates, Carlito Pizarras is now viewed as a national treasure

International Wildlife, May-June, 2000 by Floyd Whaley

When these visitors asked why he spent so much time helping the animals, Pizarras struggled for an answer. He had no idea that he was part of a tiny but global effort to understand and save the tarsiers. In the end, he had only a simple answer. "I just learned to love them," he said. "I didn't want them to be gone."

Pizarras learned from the researchers that the animal he was trying to protect was an obscure and threatened species (one of several tarsier species globally; scientists are still arguing about the exact number). He also learned that studies of other tarsier species in Indonesia confirmed many of the observations he had made over the years. To his surprise, he also discovered that American primatologists were not able to match his success in captive breeding.

"We still don't know how to maintain these animals in captivity so that they stay healthy and breed successfully," notes David Haring of Duke University's Primate Center.

Though they are popularly known in the Philippines as the "world's smallest monkey," tarsiers defy easy categorization. Some scientists believe the creatures should be classed as prosimians, an older (or "lower") order of primates that could date back 55 million years. But other researchers think tarsiers are part of a more recent (or "higher") order of primates, like monkeys and humans.

How to classify the Philippine tarsier and its cousins is just one mystery about the animal. "Almost everything about this species needs to be studied," says Sharon Gursky, an anthropologist at Queen's College in New York who has researched tarsiers in the wild.

Some basic facts about tarsiers are known. With grayish brown fur and a nearly naked tail, the animals rarely grow to more than half a foot long. They are nimble climbers in the trees and hop like tiny kangaroos on the ground. They can leap as far as 10 feet (about 20 times their body length) to flee predators. Their huge eyes allow them to see well at night, when they hunt for crickets, beetles, termites and other creatures.

A female tarsier, which has about a six-month gestation period, produces one infant each spring. The infant is carried in its mother's mouth and deposited in places safe from snakes, cats and other predators in the forest while the mother forages for food. The newborn tarsier can cling to branches almost immediately after birth and can leap after about a month. The creature can live for 12 years or longer.

But many aspects of Philippine tarsiers remain a puzzle: how many exist in the wild, which habitats they prefer and how they can be protected. Irene Arboleda, a graduate student at Adelaide University in Australia, is seeking the answers to these questions. Arboleda recently spent time in Bohol studying the animal's home range, reproductive cycle and behaviors, with invaluable assistance from Carlito Pizarras. Though not a scientist, there were few questions he could not answer. "He's been continuously exposed to the animal for 30 years, possibly longer than anyone else alive," said Arboleda. "He has substantial data, but it's all in his head."