Verreaux's sifaka

Verreaux's sifaka
Temporal range: Pleistocene - recent
CITES Appendix I
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Strepsirrhini
Family: Indriidae
Genus: Propithecus
Species:
P. verreauxi
Binomial name
Propithecus verreauxi
Distribution of P. verreauxi
Synonyms
  • majori Rothschild, 1894
  • verreauxoides Lamberton, 1936

Verreaux's sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi), or the white sifaka, is a medium-sized primate in one of the lemur families, the Indriidae. Critically Endangered, it lives in Madagascar and can be found in a variety of habitats from rainforest to dry deciduous forests of western Madagascar and the spiny thickets of the south. Its fur is thick and silky and generally white with brown on the sides, top of the head, and on the arms; its ventral area is relatively glabrous. Its body is adapted to an arboreal existence in which the major form of locomotion is vertical leaping; on the ground its only means of locomotion is a "dancing" form of hopping. The species lives in smallish groups (~2-13 animals) and is primarily folivorous.