Horsfield's Tarsier

Classification and Habitation Tarsiers are small species of arboreal primates that usually inhabit well-vegetated forests. They are mostly found on islands in southeast Asia exclusively in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the southern Philippines. Tarsiers can be identified into three groups that are based upon their geographic location: the Western Tarsier, Eastern Tarsier, and the Philippine Tarsier. Western Tarsiers are generally found in lowland forests or low mountain forest on the islands of Borneo

none more so than the tarsier. This small, lemur like primate is virtually defenceless against abnormal stressors in their environment. Because of their heightened senses, unnatural stimulation—such as a camera flash—distresses the animal so intensely it crushes its own skull. The likelihood of this occurring increases exponentially the closer tarsiers are to humans. Many people do not understand how fragile the “wide-eyed” primate is, even slight exposure can make the tarsier

and the Middle Miocene in northern Thailand, allow us to compare ancient characters with many modern extant tarsiers. Tarsiers are subject to high levels of predation as they inhabit a specific biotope and are subject to avian predators as well as ground dwelling species (Řeháková-Petru, Peške, and Daněk 2012). Predation avoidance is important to a small bodied primate, for example a tarsier or galago (Gursky 2003). The hypothesis of predator avoidance when applied to the many unique characters seen